


Across Times

by Ronya_of_the_forests



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Lore Olympus (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternative Perspective, Childhood Trauma, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Fate & Destiny, Hades is slightly OOC, Modern Era, Persephone is slightly OOC as well, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Souls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:41:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24081475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ronya_of_the_forests/pseuds/Ronya_of_the_forests
Summary: A reworking of the story of Hades and Persephone, mixing various elements from the original myth, Lore Olympus, and other aspects not part of official canon.Ella is a green-thumb and a natural loner, who likes plants more than she likes people. With a hardened outlook on life and love due to having a past as a foster kid, she avoids relationships like the plague. Until one day, when she literally knocks a man down, drenches him in coffee, and discovers that the guy sounds exactly like the man, who she has been dreaming about for the past five years. The man, a visiting research fellow studying Greek mythology, knows who Ella really is and aims to show her exactly where she belongs - in his world and in his heart.
Relationships: Hades & Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Hades/Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Hades/Persephone (Lore Olympus)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 65





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is work of fiction and I have used characters from the original Greek myths as well as characterisation and parts of dialogues from Lore Olympus webcomic. 
> 
> This work has not been beta-read.
> 
> English is my second-language and I apologise for any spelling or grammar errors that may appear in this text.

This is a story how I discovered, who I **really** was.

I had been born Ella Michaels, I was a foster kid, and a loner, and I loved cute things and plants.

I was ready to go out and live my life, guns blazing, because after the childhood I had, what else was I to do?

But life had other plans for me.

It all started with dreams – a mysterious guy with no face, a seductive voice, a pair of large soft hands.

I never knew I’d meet the guy, who owned that voice and those hands.

I never knew he was Hades, Ruler of the Underworld.

I didn’t know I was his wife.

Almost everything up to that point had been a tragedy – a story of love, heightened tensions, loss and despair.

But universe has a thing about second chances – at least if one is in possession of an immortal soul.

This is how I found out that I, Ella Michaels, was actually Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.


	2. It all started with a cup of coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella is late and runs over a guy, drenching him in coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is set very much in AU, but I plan for it to turn into more Lore Olympus/real myth story-like halfway through. 
> 
> It is not beta-read.

“Crap!”

I was going to be late. Again.

I H-A-T-E-D being late – being late shows that you don’t consider other people’s time as important as yours. It’s good manners not to be late. And now I was late, again.

I just knew it – today was **not** going to be my day.

I had almost slept in because my alarm didn’t ring – luckily sun started to shine on my face and I woke up.

Then I broke one of my favourite mugs and felt sad, since it had kitten ears on it.

Then – some asshole almost side swept me at the traffic junction.

Honestly, at that point, I should have just gone back home, called sick at work, skipped the class, and hope the sky wouldn’t fall on me.

And now I was going to be late, because some nasty elderly customers had treated me like their personal slave and heckled me repeatedly, because I had to confirm three times that the nursery was not selling tulip bulbs in spring. In spring!

And of course, as per my luck today, there were no parking spaces nearby the community college campus either. Perfect! Could this day get any worse?

***

Never ask if something could get worse if you’ve already started to have a bad day.

You know why?

Because I can absolutely guarantee that asking that question from the universe will open up the bad luck floodgates even more and you’ll definitely have even worse of a day.

That’s the reason I’m sitting at the back of my lecture hall, not paying any attention to the lecturer at front, feeling completely dazed out of my mind.

I’m still in utter shock.

_I had met **him**. _The guy from my dreams. The one I had consistently been dreaming of since I was 17 years old.

***

Naturally, I had had no idea who he was – I had never even seen his face. He never had a face in my dreams. But he had a voice – an amazing voice, which had been accompanying my dreams for all these years – and large hands and….

And I ran into him, on my way from the parking lot to the campus buildings, and spilling his still warm (but thankfully not scalding hot) coffee all over him.

I hadn’t even seen him, but that’s because I was late and not paying attention.

So, after ploughing into him, spilling his coffee, dropping all of my things, and profusely apologizing, promising to reimburse his coffee and possibly paying for his dry-cleaning, I got the shock of my life when _that_ voice greeted me back.

The bluest eyes – eyes that resembled stars – looked back into mine and the voice I had been hearing in my dreams for the past five years were both accompanying a very tall and a beautiful man, with jet black hair and a prominent nose and the jawline to die for.

But what truly shocked me was his voice – asking **me** if I was alright.

That voice!

His voice.

I knew that it was statistically unlikely to never meet someone whose voice would resemble that of my dream guy, but I didn’t actually expect that to happen. And not with a guy who looked like he could have walked the runways, not a sidewalk on community college campus.

“Are you alright?”, he asked me once more.

I knew I was staring at him, having clearly missed his first enquiry.

“Yeah. Shouldn’t I be asking this from you instead?”, I said back, trying to simultaneously avoid his gaze, but also aiming to get a good look at his face.

I was trying to gather my things and get up, as I was already very late for my class, but I just couldn’t leave without offering to reimburse for his coffee and his clothes and my god, his voice! Hearing it out here, from a man of flesh and blood, shook me to the core.

“Look, I’m extremely sorry over running you over. It was my fault, I wasn’t looking where I was running, because I’m already very late, and I’m just – God, I’m so-so sorry!”, I said.

He was about to say something, but I rambled on: “I’ll reimburse you for the coffee and I’ll have your clothes dry-cleaning bill paid if you send me an invoice. I hope you weren’t burned by that. Gods, I’m sorry, I’m normally very careful over these things, but I had the crappiest morning and I’m..”

“It’s quite alright”, he said with a small smile. Perfect white teeth. Even his smile was nice. _Crap_.

“No harm done – the coffee wasn’t that hot anymore and it will come out of the clothes. You should have been more careful, but I’ll live being mowed down by a beautiful woman”, he added with an even greater smile, still sitting on the ground.

“Could you help me gather my things, though? I’m afraid I will have to throw away the remains of my coffee and well – you **did** take me down, you know?”, he added, now with a smirk, as he was starting to get up.

I was so late. Crappy-crap. But I did run into him and I did coat him, possibly his papers _and_ his bag, with coffee, so that was the least I could do.

“Of course I’ll help you”, as I bent to gather the things he had dropped.

As he went to find a trash bin, to deposit his now empty coffee cup and some of his very drenched papers – Gods, I hope that wasn’t important school-related work; I could murder someone if they’d do this to mine – I got a good look at his retreating figure and felt myself exhale a very shaky breath.

I was almost certain this was the guy I had been dreaming about since I was 17. You see, I had never been able to recall dreams until one day, very soon after my 17th birthday, I started to remember them. At first, I was only able to remember some – a voice whispering into my ears, the feel of hands caressing my body, the shivers of pleasure. Not all dreams were of sexual nature – I remember dreams of laughing and running and being caught in a pair of very strong arms – but I had certainly gathered a significant amount of them over the few years I had been having them.

There had never been a face in my dreams though. They say that we only encounter the faces of people we’ve met or seen; that our brains cannot simply generate a face themselves, therefore they recycle them from our experiences – people passing on the streets, a guy from the bus or a girl from the library. Your conscious supposedly doesn’t need long-term exposure to remember a face, but you won’t be able to recall where you saw the owners of those faces anyway.

I would have remembered him, I thought now – I was sure of it. Especially someone with my past. I would have remembered those hands and that voice and that face.

Which meant, that as I watched him walk away in search of the bin, I felt a cascade of emotions grip me all at once. I recalled **all** those dreams – and blushed furiously. I felt like an idiot for not paying attention and running into him. I wanted to sink below the ground for making him spill his coffee. And I wanted, so badly, to know who he was.

He was beautiful and I wanted to find out if there was any chance I might have seen him somewhere in my past, which could explain why he had been part of my dreams for the past five years.

But as he was walking back towards me, I realized how crazy it would have sounded, if I would have asked him if he’d ever been around where I had lived at a time, and I decided against it. So what that he sounded like the guy I dreamt of? Lots of people probably sound similar….right? It’s not like our voices are wholly unique – with so many people on this planet, we’re bound to meet someone who reminds us someone else. Right?

I grabbed a pen from my pocket and ripped a piece of paper from my binder, quickly jotting down my name, my phone number, and my email. Just as I finished writing my contact details down, he was back, sans coffee cup, but still completely drenched.

“I’m really sorry”, I apologized once more. “Here are my contact details – you can call me or email me and I’ll reimburse you for everything. I hope none of those papers contained something important?”, I said, as I tried to hand him the paper.

He only looked at me, with a hint of a smile, and just as I wanted to elaborate that I _really_ had to leave, he spoke: “How about you take me to your favourite coffee place and buy me that coffee? At your own convenience, of course”.

I squinted my eyes slightly at him and asked back: “Are you… asking me out?”

Eyes still on me, with no movement towards taking that paper, he answered back: “I’m asking for that coffee you want to reimburse – but in person”.

Okay, this was no good. I felt ecstatic and wary at once.

First – beautiful men like him were dangerous. Men in general can be dangerous, but beautiful men like him – I could hear my brain yelling _danger ahead!_ already.

Second – he made me jittery. The kind, where you don’t know whether to laugh or shake your legs, because you feel ants running on them. It was his voice – that’s why he was making me jittery and feeling out of place.

And third – I didn’t drink coffee. I _loved_ the smell of coffee, but the taste…. bleh! I could buy coffee from a gas station and think it were good, whereas he was probably a ‘niche café and favourite coffee’ kind of a person.

“I’m not really sure if I know any good coffee places – I… I don’t drink the stuff”, I said back after slight hesitation.

He eyed me for a moment, although his eyes didn’t betray whether he thought I was lying to him or just being pretentious – turns out, some people take coffee _very_ seriously and were always appalled upon finding out I didn’t drink it – before saying: “Just take me to wherever you go yourself – I’m sure they have coffee there, with the campus spread out. I’d just like to meet you again – you having literally swept me off my feet and all”.

He was laughing at me – he was totally laughing at me; the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes told me so.

“Uhm… do you know a place called ‘Hot and Stop’? It’s a couple of streets over from here – it’s.. it’s small, but they have nice blended teas and a fair selection of coffee, from what I’ve heard”, I asked him.

“I cannot say that I do, but I’m sure my phone will be able to guide me there”, he said as he finally grabbed the paper from my hands and looked down at it, “Ella Michaels”.

Starry-blue eyes looked back at me as he said my name out loud and I felt my heart skip a beat, and then resume with a quickened _thud-thud-thud_ , and I just knew I had to get away – this guy was going to be trouble if I didn’t get out of there fast.

“Okay, well, you have my n-number, so umm… please make use of it and let me know when you’d like me to redeem that coffee for you”, as I tried to gather my wits and remember why was I even there, at the campus, in the first place. Suddenly I remembered, that before the run-in, before the coffee, before Mr Starry-Eyes, I had been late to a lecture, and I was even more late now.

I groaned out loud and set myself off, before quickly turning around: “I’m _really_ sorry, but I’m also _really_ late to my lecture and I need to go. Please call me or text me if you want that coffee. If you’d rather want me to reimburse you, you can text me your details and I’ll wire you the amount asap, okay?”, and I turned around once more and started jogging up the stairs towards the Agricultural institute.

“See you around, Ella!”, I heard him chuckling, as I waved my hand back at him and took off towards the lecture I had already missed a quarter of.


	3. Confusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella ponders on the identity of the stranger and has a another dream

I was lucky that the lecture I mostly missed – first due to being late, and second due to thinking of Mr Starry-Eyes – was on a topic I already knew.

As I was driving back to my little studio apartment, I kept replaying the coffee-incident.

Had he known me in the past? How is it that I dreamt of him? _Was_ it even him?

By the time I reached my neighbourhood, I had convinced myself that this was just a very weird coincidence, but hey – coincidences happen, even really weird ones. And this was just one guy – with close to half a planet filled with men, I was sure to meet one that sounded like the guy I kept dreaming of. It was just my rotten luck that he was there on campus and I ran into him. Just my rotten luck, that’s all.

***

That night I had one of my recurring dreams. The only exception being that this time I saw glimpses of his face as he kept whispering sweet-nothings into my ear, under a dark starry sky, on some open field. I felt love for him and based on my reactions to his words, he clearly loved me too. Then, the dream changed. We were having very loud, _very_ passionate sex, right there, in the plain view. I moaned as he kept me teetering on the verge of an orgasm, just not quite there yet. I grabbed his bicep as he tilted my hips further, grinding into me at an angle meant to maximise my pleasure and I came. Hard.

And then I woke up.

No field, no starry sky, just me – in my own bed, in my small studio. I had had one of the most intense dream orgasms and I was hot and bothered, because _he_ had made me hot and bothered. I squinted to see what time my alarm clock read and saw that it was just slightly after midnight.

“Great”, I said out loud, “now it’s going to take ages for me to fall asleep again”.

I _was_ hot and bothered. Somehow, I had actually managed to orgasm in my sleep, to a _dream guy_ nonetheless. Kind of pathetic – no boyfriend, but intense sexual dreams about a guy I literally just met.

_But you haven’t just met him – he’s been around for at least five years_ , my brain told me. Yeah, _but he’s also imaginary, the guy today was just….. a similarity_ , I told myself.

“This just keeps getting better and better. I’m arguing - with myself. And now I’m talking – in the middle of the night, with myself”, I muttered, getting up from the bed and walking over to the kitchenette to drink a glass of water.

I would lie if I would say that I wasn’t even a little bit bothered by the appearance of Mr Starry-Eyes. I tried to play it off in my mind, but something creeped me out about this, about all of this. Things like this happen in movies and sci-fi novels – they don’t happen to 22-year-olds trying to live their lives, go to work, and attend community college.

At that moment, I wished I had actually spoken to someone about my dreams. Someone, who’d know that I hadn’t lost my mind and who’d be able to listen to me ramble about this weird coincidence, where I have intense sexual and non-sexual dreams about a guy I had never met, and bam! – one day I run into him, literally, on campus, voice and all.

But I had not shared my dreams with anybody. Sharing them would have meant admitting them to someone and admitting could have meant a visit to a child psychologist. I didn’t need anybody investigating my brain, so I never told anyone. I _had_ been 17 when they started and I was no stranger to sexual imagery, so the first sex dream hadn’t really phased me much anyway.

Rather, at times of intense emotional upheavals, those dreams had sustained me. They gave me something to anticipate, which was one of the reasons I didn’t share them – when life seemed very bleak, escaping to randevouz with my dream guy seemed better than facing the reality, but I couldn’t have really said that to anyone, I would have been taken as insane.

The second aspect related to my secrecy was that I had felt loved in those dreams. And love was hard to come by – I had never felt love like that from any living being, which is how I knew, that what I felt in my dreams, must have been love. Intense, passionate, all-consuming love. Weird, sad and lonely? Perhaps. But those dreams had helped me through my worst and I couldn’t complain about that.

As I finished my glass of water and decided to go back to bed, I was hoping that this time I would dream about walking through nighttime fields, holding hands and listening to the sounds of birds and wildlife.


	4. Ella's story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter is not beta-read and since English is my second language, I apologise for grammar and language mistakes.

Two weeks passed with no calls, no emails, no messages.

 _Seems like Mr Starry-Eyes does not want that coffee after all_ , I thought. I felt slightly sad that he hadn’t, but then again, not meeting him again meant that I wasn't forced to ponder over his connection to my dream guy and could just let the sleeping dogs lie.

In the two weeks since I had managed to drench him in coffee, spring had fully blossomed. Trees grew green and the first blossoms emerged.

I **loved** spring!

Always had, probably always would. There was just _something_ about how the nature woke up after a winter, even the mild one we had over here, and everything restarted. I had always loved playing with dirt and I had converted my love for spring and freshly overturned soil into gardening, potted plants, and agriculture.

I was working at Smith’s Nursery – a chain-store specializing in everything green and growing. We had it all – plants, trees, soil, saplings, pots and accessories. And if we didn’t, we could order. I loved it! It was my dream place – all green and lush. Sure, we’d get the occasional grumpy customer or two, as well as some clients, who’d barge in, asking for a rare new hybrid orchid and threatening to never grace the store again once we had told them that we couldn’t honor their request, but in overall it was a great place to work for a person like me. I loved plants and I loved greenery and the store manager allowed me to work in shifts suitable for my community college timetable. Bonus perks were the free soil I got every year for repotting my plants, any nearly-dead rejects I was able to bring home and try to save, and employee discounts. Granted – my studio was very small and overcrowding it with plants wasn’t possible, so I only had some greenery at home, but I used my employee discount regularly for freshly cut flowers and always had some at home. If I couldn’t redecorate my walls and had to live with my second-hand furniture, at least I was able to enjoy colourful flowers on my small couch table.

I had decided to pursue a degree in Landscape Horticulture, although I tried to learn everything and anything related to plants. At one point, I had even wanted to become a botanist, but that would have entailed attaining a more expensive college degree and for now, I had been managing fine without one. I was able to work while studying, while also living alone. My life wasn’t luxurious, my studio was small and in a dingy house, but I wasn’t living badly. The neighbourhood I was living in, was largely populated by people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, but that just meant that the community spirit was strong and everybody looked out for each other. They even looked after me, and I hadn't been a very sociable person, having preferred plants to people.

Yet, I had found some people I could trust and turn to in need, had I really needed to.

Mrs Gonzales was an older lady living in my block, who baked the most amazing cookies and always fretted over the fact that I lived alone. She was also one of the worst plant owners I had ever met – everything died in her hands. I was running a semi-permanent convalescence home for the plants I kept resuscitating and bringing back to her. I suspected she was just getting on her years and forgetting how much watering she was doing, but other than killing her plants, she seemed to be doing fine. 

The Faradays were a lovely family living a bit further away, but after Mr Faraday rescued my pickup from an oil spill, I had offered to babysit their children on occasion, and we had become kind of friends.

My general manager at work, James, was an older man, who had decided to be a surrogate father to me. I had bucked at the idea at first, thinking he was hitting on a girl almost three times younger, but as he genuinely seemed to care for my well-being and not trying to get into my pants, I had mellowed out and allowed a personal connection to develop. He’d show me images of his grandchildren and talked about their achievements and I occasionally asked his help with school.

***

I didn’t really have a lot of friends. Mainly because I was constantly busy – if it wasn’t school, it was work; if it wasn’t work, I was occasionally volunteering at the local animal shelter; and if it wasn’t that, then I was at home, trying to get some downtime. I had moved to this City and to this place right after finishing high school – wanting to put as much distance between me and the horrors of it, and I had left almost everything behind that reminded me of that forsaken place, people included.

I had no biological parents and no siblings. Sometimes I wondered – did I have anybody out there? Maybe even looking for me? But I never dwelled on those thoughts too long or too deep – I had done my waiting and hoping, and life had wanted me to live, so I was going to do just that. 

Ella Michaels didn’t really exist. _I_ didn’t really exist. How could they even search for someone when I wasn’t who they thought I was?

Ella – me – had been a creation. I had been found orphaned at the steps of the local police station, in a little town thousands of kilometres away. I had been lucky to be alive when they found me, as nights were cold and I had already been chilled by the time someone brought me into the local hospital. They put out notices for me in the local media, but nobody came forward – it was as if I had appeared out of thin air.

The local nurses christened me Ella, and the guy, who had found me, gave me his own surname, so I became Michaels. They guessed my birth date, but since I seemed to be a newborn, I probably wasn’t actually much older than the date listed on my driver’s licence.

Babies, as I have been told multiple times since birth, are supposed to be adopted out very quickly – everybody loves babies, don’t they? But nobody had wanted me – baby Ella Michaels. The state declared me their own and I became a foster child.

The foster system could be viewed as the necessary evil or an amazing bridge between families and children. Sometimes it was both. To some, it _had been_ amazing – connecting people with children, who needed love and care and guidance – but for others, it had been pure hell, where already vulnerable children got abused, hurt, and permanently damaged. I was amongst the lucky few, who had experiences from both sides and who had still escaped relatively unscathed, all things considered, considering I hadn't run away, I hadn't inflicted self-damage on myself, nor had I been placed at a hospital for mental health problems. 

I had bounced from a foster home to a foster home until I had been 6 years old. Then I was placed with the Nicholls.

The Nicholls had been a nice nuclear family with two children, stay-at-home mom, and a dog. They had been looking to adopt and a girl seemed perfect for them, as their own children were boys. When I had first seen them, Mama Nicholls had seemed perfect – friendly plump woman, with very soft hands. Mr Nicholls was a businessman and traveled a lot, but his business enabled Mama Nicholls to stay at home and provide a loving home.

 _A loving home_ , I thought bitterly. _More like a razor-sharp nightmare_.

Here’s what I had learned during my stay at the Nicholls by the time I left. 

People lied and deceived. People presented themselves as kind, good, and loving, whereas they were actually mean and coldhearted, or simply uncaring. Men either cheated or didn't even need to have been fully-grown men to hurt you. 

The Nicholls had started the proceedings to first foster, and then adopt me. I fitted their family profile – my colouring fit them and I was a lovely child, despite having spent my formative childhood years in different foster homes. Upon arriving at their home, I had been given my own room, with my own bed and toys and new clothes, and it had felt like a dream; a really good dream.

But soon the cracks appeared and they widened into gaps the size of the Grand Canyon.

It started with me feeling a draft in my room at nights. I started waking up during the nights, feeling cold, discovering that my blanket was halfway off of me. I assumed I had moved around too much and kept going back to sleep. In reality, had no idea about the true cause. 

Then I started wetting the bed. At first, Mama Nicholls thought it was because of the change of environment – I was in a new place, with new people, of course a 6-year-old would need time to get used to things. But she didn’t implore further and as my ‘accidents’ continued to happen long-term, she got increasingly annoyed, then angry, at me. A highlight was when I had once again wet my bed, gone to wake her up, and she had shoved the wet bedsheet into my face to try and make me stop. As if shoving a slopping wet bedsheet at a child was going to work miracles on the reasons said child was wetting the bed in the first place.

Then my foster brother Chad started bullying me. He was a popular kid in my school, in the upper grades before transitioning, and instead of helping me settle in, he told everyone that I was a foster child, abandoned due to my mother being on drugs and father being an alchoholic, and that I was wetting the bed every night like a baby.

Another thing I had learned while at the Nicholls was that kids were cruel. Sometimes they were cruel, because their parents were cruel, but kids were cruel on their own too. The kids in that school were vicious and vulture-like – Chad had implied that I was not to be associated with and thus I was all alone.

The bedwetting, drafty room, bullying, and increasingly cold-shoulder attitude from Mama Nicholls went on for almost a half a year, until I was found by the librarian, Mrs Peabody, sobbing my heart out, hiding in the back corners of her little library.

Mrs Peabody was the first person in a long time, who hugged me and asked me if there was anything I wanted to share with her. She was the first person to sense that my crying had more to it than just the regular ‘foster child anxiety’ that some other teachers had dismissed it as such. Somehow, she got me to talk to her and after listening to my stories, must have sensed that all was not right in the Nicholls household.

Although I had to return ‘home’ that time, it was only a few weeks later that I was taken out of class by a social worker, who had wanted to talk to me about the Nicholls, who – by that time – had started proceedings to adopt me. The talk should have happened anyway, but the social worker had a recent report from Mrs Peabody – because, although anonymous, who else could have described everything in full detail uttered in my own words, but the one woman I had spoken to in the last half a year? – and she started questioning me about my life with the Nicholls.

My words and Mrs Peabody’s report must have been damning enough that I was removed from the Nicholls very shortly afterwards, and I was placed back into the foster system for a while.

It was only after I had turned 18 and accessed my case files that I found out that Mrs Peabody had reported me as a potential victim of childhood abuse and molestation. I had found out other things as well. That the cold drafty room meant that Chad been sneaking into my bedroom and pulling my blankets off me, trying to ease his hands under my pyjamas. That the bedwetting was a sign of a childhood trauma. That Mr Nicholls was a serial-cheater and had three extramarital children in just as many states. That Mama Nicholls’ turned out to have a prescription drug problem. That family had been one can of worms. 

I had been just 6. I had escaped, I realized later – it could have been so much worse.

I had problems with sleeping and bedwetting later on, but I managed to overcome the consequences of those months with the Nicholls and had mostly put them behind me.

I bounced around in foster system for another 8 years, then landed with Cynthia and John. Cynthia and John were an older married couple, who had just one biological child, but who had multiple foster children.

At 14, I had a hardened heart and I was full of teenage angst. Despite not having bad foster experiences past the age of 6, the mere fact that I was still a child under state care, without parents, made me very angry at the world. Babies were supposed to be adopted – _I_ was supposed to have been adopted. I was not supposed to have been 14, living with a foster family, still having no idea who I was or where I had come from.

Needless to say that my placement with Cynthia and John was hard on all of us at first. I exhibited a strange mix of being needy and vulnerable, but also hating every moment of attention they gave me. But Cynthia and John were good and kind people, who decided that I was worth the effort and slowly, very slowly, I began to feel like they were maybe going to be my _true_ family.

It was Cynthia, who noticed my natural aptitude to nurture anything green and decided to teach me everything she knew about plants. Whereas other foster children in our household wanted to have movie night one-on-ones with either of them, my ‘parent-child dates’, if you could call them that, were hours spent at a local gardening mall and our little greenhouse.

Allowing me to engage myself with plants and not with people, except those in the family, meant that I managed to ground myself. I worked out my anger by carting around hundreds of kilograms of soil at a time and trying to breed new hybrid plants, just to see what was going to happen to them. They tried to get me to talk to some child psychologists as well, but I had hated that and chose to speak to either them or to my plants. It wasn’t the best coping mechanism at the time, but it ended up working out alright.

I hated the local school and the people in it, but I knew I had to earn good grades to get out of that toxic cesspool of empty facades and teenage pregnancies. So I kept myself out of everybody’s business, gave in the minimum effort required to keep my grade point average high, and waited to turn 18.

Life with Cynthia and John had been good and they had wanted to adopt me, but it wasn’t meant to be. When I was just about to turn 17, their son, Michael, ended up in a car accident and became paraplegic and needed constant care thereafter. I didn’t feel resentment for that, although I could and should have – that’s what parents did; I just didn’t have parents. They supported me in every way imaginable, still, but Michael’s accident and care took a lot out of them, and at 17, I found myself being part of a family, where I wasn’t actually a part of the family. I went out looking for companionship and _almost_ ended up being a statistic - I ended up meeting some bad crowds, and despite not having been a _problem child_ myself, despite not taking drugs or alcohol, I had been hurt and was on the verge of throwing it all away. I was heading towards the cliff edge. There was going to be me, a party, a boy, and _all_ the teenage rebellion I had not acted on. 

It was John's friend, who had spotted me, and had given me _such_ a look of anger, almost-loathing, that when the police showed up at the party, just as I was about to be _very naked with a guy_ , that I had sighed a breath of relief and decided that no matter how disappointed I was in life and the muck it was throwing at me, I wasn't going to become a statistic. I had not planned on becoming another foster child gone off rails and yet, I had almost done exactly that. I was done being shat on. 

_That_ ’ _s_ when the dreams started. I thought at the time that it was my conscious trying to keep me from going off the rails again – to lash out against the injustice of finally finding a decent replacement family and then essentially losing them; to find myself someone who’d _care_ and love me for me. I figured the dreams had been a way for my brain to keep me from going after damaging relationships, where I’d end up pregnant and alone, possibly repeating a cycle, since I had no idea if my birth mother had been alone or a teenager when she had me. Having a dream boyfriend sounded deluded, even then, but it was what had gotten me through high school, and even if I’d never utter a word of it to anybody, my dream guy had helped me overcome a lot.

I would always look back at time spent with Cynthia and John as one of my happiest, even though it went slightly belly-up in the end. We still messaged occasionally – she would ask how my gardening was going and I’d ask about Michael, but it wasn’t the same. I knew they regretted how it had all gone down, but… I had dealt with it. I was 22 and I had learned to deal with life. Any psychologist would have had a field day with having me as a client with my past, but since leaving Cynthia and John, I had read many self-help books, and focused on my plants. I was good. I knew I had issues, but since I was alone, I was managing. I had a job, I was in school, I paid taxes, and I had my pickup and my little studio apartment. My life was a bit dingy and worn off here and there, but I had emerged from a crappy childhood with my shields up and swords drawn and I took nobody’s shit. I was fine.

Until I had run into _him_ , of all people, and couldn’t get the encounter out of my mind.


	5. Those who wait the longest...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short one, but the next one will be longer than that. 
> 
> As always, not beta-read and my sincerest apologies for errors.

A month had passed since my infamous meeting with Mr Handsome. He had not contacted me and I had decided to no longer ponder on whether the meeting had had a deeper cosmic reason - everything wasn't supposed to carry a deeper meaning attached to it, sometimes things just happened. So, I had labelled our meeting as an ‘unconventional accident’ and put it behind me.

It was a Saturday and I was elbow-deep in large planter, trying to repot another plant Mrs Gonzales had almost killed by her overwatering, when I heard my phone go _bzzt_ and I was forced to clean my hands to have a look at who was trying to talk to me.

Having dismissed the possibility of seeing Mr Starry-Eyes again, I didn’t even think at first when I saw that I had a message from an unknown number. After all, spam messaging _was_ a thing in the 21st century.

Alas, I had been wrong, and I felt my throat go parchment-dry as I opened up the message and saw that it was from _him_ – Mr Seductive Voice had messaged me.

_Hey! My sincere apologies for not getting in contact before, as I was out of the country, but I was wondering if I could redeem that coffee-offer you promised me :) Could we meet up later today?_

My reaction to seeing his message on my phone was just ridiculous. I didn’t get hung-up on men, I just refused to. But my breath hitched and my throat was dry and my hand shook as I kept reading and re-reading his message. _Snap out of it_ , I told myself, _just a random guy you promised a replacement coffee to, it’s not like he’s expecting you to marry him_.

I kept thinking on how to respond to him without making it sound like I had been expecting his messages all this time, but I also didn’t want to sound rude. And…. A _tiny_ part of me **had** wanted to see him again, hadn’t it? _Now’s your chance_ , my brain told me.

_Hi! I assume you’re the poor guy I showered in coffee several weeks back? Like I said, we could meet up at ‘Hot and Stop’, it’s nearby Charles’ Square. Would 5 PM suit you?_

_Really smooth Ella, really smooth_, my brain told me ironically.

I turned around to finish repotting Mrs Gonzales’ plant, but I hadn’t even been able to take a step towards the chaos, when I heard the phone go _bzzt_ again and knew he had answered. With shaking hands, I picked up the phone and opened up his message.

_Sure thing. I’ll see you at 5 then :)_

Another smiley-face – guess the guy liked smileys in his messages.

It was noon and I had to finish Mrs Gonzales’ plant and I had to get ready. _It’s not a date_ , I told myself, trying to stop myself from having jitters from being only hours away from seeing him again.

 _But you are excited to see him again_ , my brain told me, teasing me.

Crap. Crappy-crap.

 _Not a date, not a date, NOT A DATE_ , I told myself.


	6. Tongue-tied

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella goes to meet Mr Covered in Coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not beta-read and English is my second-language. It's been inspired by Lore Olympus and the original Greek myths, as well as some other pieces. 
> 
> This will also continue to be a slow-burn and dialogue-thought heavy for a while. I will tie the future chapters into existing Lore Olympus as much as possible.

I had decided to dress for comfort.

A: it offered comfort to _me_ , being able to pretend this was just me buying him back that coffee I owed and _maybe_ leaving immediately.

B: dressing comfortably would enable me to calm my nerves – dressing _nice_ would mean effort, would indicate I had _expected_ this to be a semi-date; dressing in my comfort clothes signaled that I did not view it as a date.

At least that’s what I had been hoping it signalled.

Therefore, I had stepped out in jeans, a hoodie, and sneakers – a typical college-like outfit. Nothing too grand, nothing too weird. Just one person meeting another, in a coffee place, to buy coffee. _You’re kidding yourself_ , my brain told me.

Shushing that internal monologue, I walked to ‘Hot and Stop’, hoping that he wouldn’t already be there, in hopes to gather my wits before his arrival. I was lucky – he wasn’t there yet.

I decided to sit in one of the corner seats, partially hidden from the door – but with an excellent view to the street outside – and wait for his arrival. Having no idea whether he wanted me to just buy his coffee (to go) or he wanted to sit and actually talk, I decided not to order anything yet.

My hands felt clammy, my heart was doing speedruns of _thud-thud-thud_ , and I was sure I heard my blood rush in my ears.

_You’re being stupid. You are. You’re taking this out of context and placing far greater importance on seeing this guy again, he probably just wanted his replacement coffee and_ , my brain was just telling me, when I suddenly saw him emerging from around the corner and coming towards the coffee place.

Annnnd I felt my throat go dry and a faint blush creep up my face. _Stop it! Stop it now – think of manure, smelly-smelly manure, fresh manure_ , I tried telling myself.

Not even manure worked well on that moment.

A few more seconds passed and he entered the place, immediately scanning it and finding me sitting at the corner. A smirk then graced his face, as he started coming towards me.

“Hello, _Ella_!”, he greeted me, as he pulled out a chair to sit down, and kept looking at me with his gorgeous eyes. “Fancy seeing you here”, he continued with that little smile on his face.

“H-hi again stranger”, I said, not trying to be funny, but actually referring to the fact that I had no idea who he actually was.

“Ah, yes”, he said, “we haven’t been properly introduced, have we?”, as he continued looking towards me.

_Why do you have to continue to do that – look somewhere else! Look even a little bit out of place in this situation_ , I tried telling him in my mind.

He held out his hand, as he introduced himself: “I’m Aidon Hellas. Nice to meet you”.

And as I looked at his hand and then at the guy, whose hand it was, I felt that this was a moment that could upend my whole life if I chose to accept his handshake.

Ignoring his hand would mean I would be fine.

But I’d come off as uber-bitch and rude to boot.

_Fuck it_ , my brain told me, as I decided to grab his hand and shake it.

The moment our skins touched, it felt as if I had been transported from the coffee place to my dreams. I _knew_ that hand. I had felt it, in my dreams. I had felt that hand caressing my hip, holding it in iron grip, as the owner of that hand had been giving me the best orgasms in my life.

Several things happened at once.

I blushed furiously, courtesy of blatant sexual imagery running through my mind. I also pulled my hand from his, as if I had been burned – I was sure that my hand was scorched, it had to be, because it felt like my hand been hit by an electrical current. Mr Starry-Eyes and Sexy Voice – _no, Aidon_ , my brain reminded me – kept looking at me, as his small smile took over his face and became a fully-fledged smile, as he probably tried to contemplate who was this deranged individual that had run him down a month ago.

As I was looking at him, blushing and waiting for the ground to swallow me, I noticed something – the guy had _pierced_ ears, and not the kind I had – earlobe piercings – but the sexy-looking ones that had left tiny holes in the upper parts of his ears. If anything at all, these tiny holes made him look even more… _everything_ and my blush persisted. 

“Would you like to order?”, a voice asked from somewhere above us.

A waitress had appeared during my moment of utter confusion and as I was trying to get my brain to get back into an working order, I heard Aidon ask her about different coffees they had.

“Would you mind staying in?”, he asked from me.

“Umm.. no, no I wouldn’t mind”, I answered back.

“I’d like an espresso then”, he told the waitress, and turned, once again, his attention to me.

“And for you?”, the waitress asked from me, as I was trying, very hard, to remind myself why was I there, with him, and why had I shaken his hand.

“I… um… I’ll take a pot of your apple blend, please”, I told her, trying to coax my voice back into its normal sound and not come off as breathy as I felt.

_This is a disaster,_ I thought. _He probably thinks I’m a lunatic, or worse. Say something! Anything! STOP looking at him like a fish out of water,_ my brain kept screaming at me.

At that point he must’ve realized that if he wanted us to talk, he had to be the one to open up the discussion in the first place, and he asked: “So, _Ella”_

I L-O-V-E-D the way he said my name. Ella. _Elllla_.

“How are you doing?”, he finished his question.

_What?_

“I’m fine, I’m doing fine. Great even, absolutely fantastic!”

_Oh God, kill me now. Swallow me whole and allow a tiny mercy to fall upon me_ , I pleaded in my head.

He must have realized I was so out of my element, because one corner of his mouth rose up in a tiny half-smile, as he lowered his eyes and looked at my hand on the table.

“How are you? You said you were out of the country – did you… did you travel?”, I asked back, desperate to make him speak, so I wouldn’t have to.

“Ah, yes. Look, I’m sorry for not getting back at you earlier, believe me, I wanted to”, he said.

My heart went _thud-thud-thud_ in a very quick sequence after hearing him say those words. Could a heart gallop?

“But I had this trip planned for a while, and I couldn’t cancel – not even for a woman, who charmed me off my feet, unfortunately”, he continued.

I interjected: “I’m really sorry, again, for knocking you down. I hadn’t paid attention and I was so late for my class, and I had had a crap morning, and you… I didn’t pay attention. I hope your clothes were okay? And your… papers – nothing was lost permanently?”

“Oh, everything was fine, you needn’t worry about that. I just wanted you to understand that I didn’t contact you earlier not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t, I was out of the country – believe me, we would have met way before today if I wouldn’t have been away”, he then said, looking at me in earnest.

“It’s fine, um.. Aidon”, as I tested his name on my tongue. A weird name, to think of it now.

“Umm.. is it AidOn, or AidEN, with an E made to sound like an O?”, I asked him further.

If my conscious had been a person, she would have been banging her head against the table by now. I was _so_ not good at this. I felt jittery and nervous, anxious even. And I had been making a complete fool out of myself for the past several minutes, as he looked every part of calm and collected I so desperately wanted to be.

“It’s Aidon, with an O. Old family name, goes back centuries and well, my parents were ever the traditionalists”, he said with a wry undertone. “I had business in Europe, so I had to spend a month there and I figured it wouldn’t have made sense to contact you, to invite you for a tea, while I could only meet you in a month’s time, so I decided to wait. I got back yesterday and well, here we are”. That small smile was upon his lips again.

“Europe huh? That sounds nice, I’ve never been. Maybe one day, I’d sure like to travel around there”, I said, nervously, but trying to appear calm and collected like him.

“Yes, well. I’m actually from Europe, so I travel between here and there quite often. To see my family and to do business, of course”, he elaborated.

“Wow, I wouldn’t have guessed. Your… your accent doesn’t betray you, really. Which part of Europe, if you don’t mind saying?”, I asked, feeling better by the minute. I was gripping my heart with an iron fist and trying to slow it from galloping so hard.

_See, it’s not that hard to talk to a cute guy_ , my brain told me. _Even if he did give you the best sleep orgasm in the last three months._

Oh my God, my brain.

Still, speaking to him felt… normal. I knew his voice and it was… kind of comforting, even, to talk to this stranger, who inhibited the body that carried the voice of my dreams.

“Greece. I’m Greek. Although I’ve been told that my blue eyes put people off and they usually think I come from parts of Northern Europe”, he replied back.

I was about to elaborate that I would have never placed him as Greek, but the waitress decided to appear then with my tea and his coffee, and the commotion killed the conversation for a short break.

I noticed him smile at the waitress as he murmured his “Thanks!” to her and I felt a very small _pang_ in my chest, as I really liked his smile, and seeing him offer that to someone else was a little disconcerting.

I then reminded myself why I was there. I had run this guy over and spilled his coffee all over him. This was a replacement coffee-thing, this _wasn’t_ a date. This was business, not pleasure.

I poured myself some tea, and was about to try and steer the conversation to something neutral, like the weather or the news, but he beat me, and having taken a sip from his coffee cup, he asked me first: “So, _Ella_ , what do you do? I hope I didn’t interrupt your Saturday plans too much by contacting you earlier today?”

I thought for a moment what to tell him exactly, and decided that the best course of action, as always, would be to share as little personal information as possible. I didn’t really know Aidon. I didn’t even know if the things he had told me so far were true. And chances were that after this, we’d never meet again, so truly – to tell him as little about me as possible was really the only course of action I could take.

“I’m a student at the community college. I work in meantime and I was just repotting my neighbour’s Ficus tree when you messaged me”, was my answer to his question – short, impersonal, informative.

“You were repotting your neighbour’s tree?”, he asked, eyebrow raised with the tilt of his voice, as he repeated my own words back to me.

“Yes. She tends to kill them, you see, so I offered to try and rescue it, rather than dump it to the garbage”, as I shrugged my shoulders and took another large gulp of my tea, thoroughly scalding my mouth in the process. Wincing slightly, I placed my cup back on the table, and saw him eye my mouth and the cup, as he asked: “Too hot?”

“I was a bit too enthusiastic about my tea, yes”, I replied back.

Taking a long look at me, he once again questioned: “Did I interrupt your regularly scheduled Saturday programming, though? I wouldn’t want you to miss meeting your friends because of me”.

_Yeah buddy, no way am I telling you that I really had no plans. I’ve seen the true crime shows – I admit nothing_, I told him in my brain.

“I told them I’m meeting up the guy I ran into, they know where ‘Hot and Stop’ is”, I said, faking nonchalant attitude.

“Oh, so your friends know about me?”, he questioned me further, looking suspiciously pleased.

Another quick lie: “Not in detail, of course, as I hardly know you, but they know I ran someone down and offered to reimburse you and they know we’re meeting here today”.

“Well I hope to meet those friends of yours, someday”, Aidon said back, taking another sip from his cup.

Deciding that I didn’t feel comfortable with him trying to pry into my private life, but feeling that it was too early for me to leave, I decided to change tactic and pursue his own questioning.

“So, Aidon, what are _you_ doing here? You said you’re Greek – it’s surprising to find you here, especially as I understood you’re not _from_ here, but you’re actually from Greece?”, I ended my sentence with a question, feeling a bit lame, because he had literally confirmed the same things to me just minutes before.

He took another sip of his coffee as I tried to drink my tea with now-burned mouth, finding it difficult, and as he placed his cup back on the table, he braced his elbows on the table, looked at me in the eye, and started speaking.

“I work at the local university – I’m a visiting research fellow. I was lucky to get a grant to come and work here for a while, although I haven’t really been teaching much, my focus is on research. I was visiting the local community college library that day as I’m after a specific book and surprisingly, your community college library had a copy of it, whereas my own university did not. I was heading over there when you ploughed into me”, he finished, with a smirk.

He seemed to smirk a lot when he was looking at me. I didn’t know whether to find it cute or problematic.

“Oh, so… you’re an academic. A research fellow – that implies you’re pretty high in academia, right? With a PhD, at least?”, I said.

Smart _and_ gorgeous-looking, with a voice to die for. With _pierced_ upper ears – something I imagined not a lot of academics had. Were academics even that hot like this guy?

And I had covered him in coffee.

_Way to go Ella! Not!_

And came to meet him in sneakers, jeans, and a hoodie, while he looked like he had just stepped out of Brooks Brothers catalogue.

Smooth Ella, _really_ smooth, I chastised myself again.

“Something like that, yes”, he said, as he nodded back at me.

“What are you researching? What’s your specialty?”, I asked back.

“I studied History for my undergrad and Oral history and Folklore for my graduate studies. My PhD focused on Greek mythology, so I’m continuing on that path, for now”, he said, with his hands around his coffee cup. Enormous hands, small cup.

_Lucky cup_ , I found myself thinking.

“Greek mythology? As in….”, I tried to scramble what little I could remember from my studies in high school, suddenly not wanting to appear unknowledgeable to this beautiful man in front of me, who held a _freakin’_ PhD to my ‘still attending community college and working at a Smith’s Nursery’, but all I could remember was the Disney Hercules movie and some myth about Zeus and the cow and pomegranate seeds, so I went with, “… the Ancient Greek Gods?”

_Thank God, I hadn’t blurted out the bit about Hercules_ , I thought.

“Yes, actually. Precisely about that”, he replied with a twinkle in his eyes.

“I didn’t even know this was still a thing. Studying mythology, that is. I mean… not to dismiss your specialty, but haven’t we learned a lot already, because… well, the myths are several thousand years old?”, I finished lamely.

“You’re correct again, of course. We do know a lot about Greek mythology, but there is a lot we still speculate on. Myths are retellings of how things were or how they were perceived, but our understanding of these myths change over time. Sometimes, new discoveries are made – either archeological or anthropological – so that changes perspectives as well. And.. well, Greek mythology has fascinated people for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Why not study it?”, he finished.

I felt a bit sheepish over asking him to elaborate. He didn’t seem bothered by my question, but his answer seemed almost rehearsed, as if he had given it again and again to some simpering fool, who had once more asked him, why had he decided to study something like Greek myths.

“I’m sorry if I offended you – it wasn’t my intention”, I apologized.

“No offences taken, you didn’t offend me at all. I’m happy to talk about my research some other time, although for most people, PhD level research often sounds boring, because it can be very boring if you’re not wholly embedded in the topic yourself”, he said, with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

“But I’d much rather find out about _you_ , Ella. You said you’re in community college – what are you studying? What’s your specialty?”, he continued speaking, choosing me as the central focus once again.

Would I give too much away if I’d tell him? I can allow a little more leeway, can’t I?

“I’m studying Landscape Horticulture. I’m almost done as well, it’s my last semester”, I decided to let him in on this information.

He seemed to be surprised, but… pleased about my answer. His eyes crinkled at the corners, slightly, as he said: “That explains the plant and the neighbor then – green thumbs, huh?”

I relaxed even more, because this was something I could talk to him about. My plants, my love for nature and greenery. And plants were universal and impersonal, so I had no reason to share more personal information with him.

“Yeah. I’ve always been good with growing and nurturing things, so I decided to pursue something I already knew I was good at. It offers decent employment opportunities and well… I’ll never starve, I know how to grow my own food”, I added. Maybe I shouldn’t have added that last part – too revealing perhaps – but he didn’t seem to grasp on that piece of information.

“Will you continue to pursue a university degree?”, he asked. “My university has a very wide selection of programmes, they might have something for your interests as well, you know”, he added, with interest in his eyes.

“I know, they do. But…. I’m not interested in something like landscape architecture and while I know about biology, I don’t excel in biology. I thought about botany, for a while, but I’m truly happy where I am the moment, and university would mean taking on more costs and loans and with the student loan ratio as it is, I’m just…. I’m happy where I am”, I finished, a bit lamely.

“Well, if you do wish to pursue, you could always let me know – I might be able to get you a meeting with someone from a faculty you’re interested in, if you’d like”, he said with a smile.

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind”, I replied back.

I decided to abandon my tea then – I had scalded myself too harshly and couldn’t enjoy the tea anymore. His coffee had run out a while back, during my monologue, so I figured now was the time to put an end to this. I felt reluctant, but truly – it had to be done.

As on cue, the waitress appeared, asking: “Would you like anything else?”, and before Aidon was even able to chime in, I told her that I’d come and pay for our orders. The waitress turned to leave and as I stood up to go and pay, Aidon stood up as well, and grabbed my arm. Scorching hot shivers went through me, and I remembered his hand holding my palm as we had shaken hands, and I could smell his perfume, and I felt a tiny part of my heart feeling sad that this was it – I had met him and I’d probably not see him again.

But then he opened his mouth and said: “I’ll take care of the coffee and your tea, if you don’t mind”.

Looking up into his eyes – had he always been so tall? – I had to swallow, as I remembered that it was only because of me that we were even here.

“No Aidon, we met because I was to reimburse your coffee, remember? So, I’ll go and pay, if you allow me”, as I moved to step past him.

He spun me around, not letting me leave yet, and looked at my face, as he spoke: “I want to meet you again, so I don’t want you to reimburse my coffee just yet.” Another smile, just for me.

_Thud-thud-thud._

“I’d like to keep the coffee-offer on the backburner, so we could meet again. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Uhhh….”, was all I could manage to say. Classy, Ella. Just in case it wasn’t clear that here’s a drop-dead beautiful man with amazing blue eyes, with a post-graduate education to boot, and all you can reply to his enquiry is an elaboration of “ummm”.

“I take that as yes, then”, he said. Then, he turned around, went to pay and left me standing there, feeling like a fool. Dumbstruck fool, but a fool nonetheless.

_You were supposed to buy him his coffee back_ , my brain told me. _But he didn’t want coffee, did he? He wanted to meet you_ , is what my heart was telling me.

Suddenly, I once again wished I had a bosom friend like Anne in the book of ‘Anne of Green Gables’. Someone I could talk to about this, someone who speculate with me over what did all of this mean. Someone who could tell me that _this_ meeting had been a normal occurrence, nothing weird about it, that normal people with families and friends met people like that all the time.

“Ella, we ready to go?”, I heard Aidon ask.

_We._ I allowed myself to feel very giddy about that singular _we_ even if only for a fraction of a second.

_Great_ , I thought, _once again he caught me zooming out in my thoughts. I seem to be doing that a lot lately_.

“Yes, of course”, as I went towards the door.

Like a gentleman, he allowed me to exit first, opening the door for me. Outside, the sun was shining and as I had a look at my phone, I saw that we had only spent an hour together. It had felt both much longer and much shorter than that.

We stood, a bit awkwardly, looking at each other, and as I was trying to figure out how to bid him goodbye, he grabbed my hand once more, and spoke: “I really liked seeing you today, Ella. I’d want to see you again, soon, please. My treat.” His thumb caressed my hand – a gesture too intimate for my comfort, and I wrenched my hand from his, and he took a slight step away from me. “Sorry, that was too forward of me, I think”, he said, face serious.

“No, it’s fine”, I lied.

“It’s okay, Ella, you don’t have to lie to me”, he said very gently. “This aside – I’m serious when I’m saying that I want to see you again. I’m hoping”, and that’s where it seemed he was _almost_ nervous, “you would like to see me again as well?”

_Did_ I want to see him again?

_Only a thousand times_ , my heart said. My brain must have conceded, because it said nothing.

“I… uhm.. sure. I would. I would like to see you again”, I said, as I decided to throw every caution into the wind and keep up this elaboration, which surely must have been a fantasy. Him and his voice and his looks and his brain.

_Smart and gorgeous_ , I reminded myself.

He smiled, fully then, if not a bit shyly. “Very well then. Would… Tuesday be okay?”, he asked.

“Next Tuesday?”, I croaked. As in – three days from now? That soon?!

“Yeah. I told you I’d like to see you again”, he said.

Tuesdays were my long shift days – I had no classes that day and I always did a long shift to earn a bit more money.

“Ah, I’m sorry, I always work on Tuesdays”, I said, and I saw his face fall just a fracture. “But my Thursday evening is free next week, if… if you don’t have plans”, I added.

“I’ll make it free for you”, he said, clearly happy I had offered a new time.

“Oh, please don’t cancel your plans for me, I’m sure we can”, I was about to continue, when he said instead, looking into my eyes, with a very earnest look: “Ella, I _want_ to see you again. As soon as possible. I’ll make rearrangements, alright?”

“Okay”, I said back.

“Well then… until Thursday”, he said, standing in front of the coffee place.

“Yeah, see you”, I answered back, and I turned, dazed, to walk back to my pickup.

As I rounded the corner of the street, I glanced back at the ‘Hot and Stop’ and saw that he was still standing there, eyes on me. He waved a small wave and waved back, and as I went behind the building, I thought to myself _Ella, what the hell have you gotten into?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I needed a name for my mysterious guy - I went with a shortened version of Hades and something that would perhaps resemble a phrasing "Greece" or "of Greece". I don't know any Greek, so my apologies to everyone if I butchered it. 
> 
> I know that Hades is OOC in this part, but it will come to more similar to LO in later chapters. 
> 
> While I was writing this, I kept being hounded by two songs, which helped to inspire this piece and this particular chapter:
> 
> Hozier's "No plan" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXq_J29V5Io
> 
> and
> 
> Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF1R0hc5Q2I


	7. The Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very short addition to the previous chapter. 
> 
> As always - texts are not beta-read and English is not my first language. Text is written by referencing to materials from Lore Olympus (author Rachel Smythe), the original Greek mythology, and potentially a few more.

As I got to work on Sunday, I kept thinking about the meeting that had taken place the day before. Frankly, I had spent the rest of my Saturday evening freaking out over planning to see him again, and thought of cancelling the planned meeting on Thursday.

This wasn’t normal for me.

Normal was keeping myself away from other people. Normal was _maybe_ making side-eye glances at a cute guy. Normal was _not_ the cute – no, gorgeous, beautiful, smart, and sexy – guy wanting to spend time with me. By all accounts, he should have been dating models or at least someone with as high academic drive as he seemed to have. _Maybe he is dating them_ , my brain told me, _you’d never know_.

_Shut up, you evil bitchy twin_ , I told myself.

Little as my relationship-experience was – almost none to be exact – I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that all romances ended with a happy ending like Mrs Gonzales’ trashy romance books depicted. In fact, if anything, the Nicholls showed me that having a sleazy man as your partner was quite possible. As if I needed a reminder that love was a foreign concept to me.

But then I looked at Mr Faraday and couldn’t imagine him having anybody else but his family, so I had to relent – maybe all men weren’t sleazy scumbags. James at work wasn’t sleazy either, but I had learned that hard lesson after I had told him what I thought of him and he very gently and kindly had had to explain to me that I had been an 18-year-old slip of a girl, going at things alone in this life, and he had been just worried about me, in a fatherly, not in a ‘man-interested-in-a-woman’ way. We had come a _looong_ way after that incident and I had apologized to him profusely, in luck, really, that he hadn’t fired me on the spot.

Which is why when a third bag of heavy compost soil slipped from my hands and landed on my toes – because I had been distracted and thinking of a certain male individual – James told me to take a breather and asked me to come to the back and have some tea.

“You doing okay today, kid?”, he asked. “I know you hate prying, but you seem to be miles away from this place and you usually love it here”.

“I’m doing okay, James, just… distracted today, I guess”, I answered truthfully. I _was_ distracted. And confused and apprehensive. All because of a guy.

“Everything still going well in that school of yours?”, he probed on as he made me tea and poured coffee for himself.

“Yes, I should be done very soon”, I answered him.

“I’m proud of you, kiddo”, as he said, as he patted me twice on my shoulder, left me to be alone with my thoughts in the break room.

It _was_ something I felt proud over. I had come from nothing but the clothes on me, my car, and my few possessions and some money, and I had managed to carve a life for myself, school and all. My grades were excellent – I could have continued on to universities, but – if I were to be honest to myself – I wanted to take time and just be. Read books, go and see movies, have evenings or days to myself, and not move only between my school, work, the animal shelter, or my neighbourhood. Once school was over, maybe I’d even manage to save some money and take a small trip somewhere else, just to have a change of scenery. _Like real people, with real lives_ , my brain whispered to me like a bitchy frenemy. Well, this was my _real_ life, and I intended to take full advantage of that.

As long as I dealt with Mr Aidon Seductive Voice with Pierced Ears upcoming Thursday.


	8. Books are for Lovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella and Aidon meet for a second time. He talks, she blushes, he likes her, she.. likes him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Text is not beta-read and English is my second-language. 
> 
> Also, text contains references to characters and situations from Lore Olympus (author Rachel Smythe) and the original Greek myths, plus some more.

Three days had passed and my anxiety was climbing through the roof. I was to meet Aidon at the Frank’s Book Café nearby City Park at precisely 6 PM. I wasn’t usually overly concerned over my looks, but I had still spent almost an hour deciding what to wear, especially as I was planning on coming straight from college and was going to have no time to change clothes. I had opted to wear black tights, a simple black dress with a navy blue oversized cardigan, and my trusty boots. I figured I looked decent for class _and_ whatever this was – a meeting, a _date_ , a convergence of… something.

It was crazy. A month ago I hadn’t even known he had existed and now I was ready to go on a date-thingie with him. Me – the girl, who kind of shunned men.

_Not this man though_ , I whispered to myself.

By the time I left my class, I started to worry if I had overdressed – maybe my comfort clothes would’ve suited better, since a dress, even as basic as this, might make him think I thought of this as a date, and I wasn’t sure if it was that. But it was too late now, I had no option to go and change, so I drudged on.

I arrived early, as I had opted to walk and to leave my pickup at the college campus parking lot – it would have been hard to find parking places nearby and it promised to be a warm and a sunny evening, so I enjoyed my walk over and was planning to enjoy my walk back later.

I was not going to allow him to pay for my order this time though – allowing him to pay meant that I accepted whatever this was as a date, and without a strict confirmation as such, I didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings. _You allow them to pay and they get expectations_ , is what one of the earlier foster sisters had told me in a placement in-between the Nicholls and Cynthia and John. I had my own money, so I could definitely afford a cup of tea whilst out with Aidon. And he just had to suck it up that a girl paid her own way.

I opted for a seat quite far from the entrance, in a little quiet corner with two very plush armchairs, but with a clear path to the exit and in clear view of the servers. Since this was a book café, I grabbed a random photobook about European travel destinations and decided I would engage myself with that before his arrival.

I must have been so engrossed in studying pictures of Santorini, Greece, that I had not heard him arriving and only reacted when he asked me: “Santorini is beautiful, isn’t it?”

Feeling caught out over looking at images of Greece – where he was from, because of course I just had to be caught looking at images from his part of the world and not images of the lavender fields in Provence – I blushed slightly and closed the photobook with a slight _thump_ , and placed it on the windowsill behind me.

“Good evening”, he said, with obviously humored blue eyes.

“Hello to yourself as well”, I answered back, eyeing how he dropped his satchel between us and went to grab menus to order.

_Be brave_ , my heart told me, _he’s nice_.

_He’s beautiful and therefore dangerous_ , my brain told me.

Beautiful, yes. Dangerous? Maybe. But even I had to admit I liked watching him walk towards me. Guilty pleasure? Oh, yes indeed.

“Have you been here before that you decided on this particular place?”, I tried to make a conversation.

He frowned very slightly at my question and answered: “I like books, I like coffee, and they have an excellent selection of tea. I thought you might like it here”.

I felt something warm pass through my veins at his words of _I thought you might like it here_.

“Khm… yes, it is very nice, I like the.. um, books”, I answered back.

He handed me the menu and I almost winced when I saw the pricings for a pot of tea – _nice_ apparently came with a hefty price tag. But I had agreed and it’s not like I went out a lot or splurged a lot on clothes, shoes, or makeup.

Thing was - what I owned was serviceable and often second-hand. Growing up as a foster kid in different families meant often that you had other kids’ hand-me-downs and one got used to it. Some kids become adults, who later refused to approach second-hand goods with even a ten-foot pole, but to me, second-hand just spelled ‘prudence’ and ‘thrifty’ and meant that I was able to save more money for something else. Which is why a large share of my wardrobe and furniture was second-hand. It also meant that I could _technically_ afford a pot of tea that cost me three times the usual amount, but I nevertheless considered it a daylight robbery.

He must have sensed me looking at the prices, because he very quickly added: “Just so you know, today’s meeting is on me, again, so you don’t need to worry about the prices”.

Something about his words instantly annoyed me, because it sounded a tad arrogant that he just decided that this is what he would do. Especially as I didn’t even know what _this_ was.

I squinted my eyes at him.

“I can perfectly well buy myself a cup of tea and you needn’t inconvenience yourself on my behalf”, I said, realizing that now _I_ might have sounded tad too high and mighty, but the words had already left my mouth so I could hardly take them back now. 

“I wasn’t trying to imply you couldn’t afford it – I was merely saying”, he was about to argue, but I cut him off with my own retort, “You merely implied that you wanted to pay, I know. But: I am a big girl and I pay my own way, and I would prefer to do so tonight”.

I instantly felt bad.

_Ella, you’re being bitchy_ , I told myself.

It’s not like every guy wants to take an advantage of a woman, isn’t it? Just my own vulnerabilities and pride coming into play. I groaned inwardly.

“Look, Aidon”, I started saying and looked into his eyes, “I didn’t want to offend, I just wanted to make sure that we both know what this is, that I’m not taking advantage of you nor this meeting. Especially as I still, technically, owe you that coffee”, as I tried to lighten the mood with a small smile.

His eyes had gone slightly darker and they looked like a storm was brewing in them – I _loved_ his eyes; I could gaze into them forever, and when they turned darker like this, they did _something_ to me.

“What do you mean by saying ‘what this is’ – what do _you_ think _this_ is?”, he asked me back.

Well… fuck. Crap. Crappy-crap.

“Um… we’re having our second ‘talk-and-meet’ meet?”, I offered, wincing a bit.

Stormy eyes held my own. His eyes squinted very slightly and he raised his face a fraction of an inch, when his voice shot straight through my stomach, making my insides quiver, when he said: “Funny – I kind of thought this might count as a date. As in – ‘I take you out and pay for our coffee/dinner’ date.”

I was _screwed_.

I didn’t really date, not really. I didn’t really have time and... well, the few men my eyes had caught on, had not looked at me _that_ way and I was honestly too wary of most men to actively go out and look for guys to date. For too many men, the word ‘date’ also equaled to the word ‘have sex’ and I didn’t do that. Not after I almost had sex with a random boy all those years ago.

But if Aidon thought our ‘talk-and-meet over coffee’ was a date, then it would’ve been wrong to pass him over because some men only want what’s between my legs. Right? Especially as I _kind of_ liked him.

Suddenly, I really wanted this to be a date-date.

“I… umm..”, was the only thing I managed to utter out. _Great,_ I thought, _make sure to show him exactly who he wanted to have a ‘date’ with_.

“Look, Ella”, he started, sighing deeply and looking down at his own hands, “I _really_ like you”. He raised his eyes and looked into my own, and I swear my heart skipped a beat.

“As in, I _really_ really like you. It sounds crazy, I know, as we’ve only met a few times, but…. I count myself very lucky to have had you run into me and I’d do anything to keep seeing you. I know this is our second ‘coffee-meeting’, but I’d like to make a habit it out of them. If these meetings are not to your liking, we can do whatever you want, as long as I would get the chance to learn to know you better”. His eyes seemed honest when he uttered those words.

Well… alrighty then.

“Okay”, I answered, “I can do that. I.. khm, I would like to know more about you as well”, I said back. There, I said it. I had admitted that I wanted to learn more about him. _Show me what makes you tick, Mr Full suit Academic with Pierced Ears._

It looked like someone had turned on the light in his eyes, because suddenly, his eyes lit up and he carried the biggest smile I had seen on his face yet. _And I thought he couldn’t get even more beautiful_.

“I’m very glad to hear that”, he said, quietly, still smiling.

“But I’m still paying for myself tonight”, I warned him, before I looked down at my menu again. I felt his eyes burning holes into my head, but I chose to ignore it and very pointedly focused on their tea selection to avoid accidentally catching his gaze.

He sighed and very quietly said, with resolve in his voice: “Very well, you can pay for yourself this time. But the next time, the bill is on me, and I mean it, Ella”.

“We’ll see”, is all I decided to answer him back.

_Two can play at that game, you know_ , I told him in my mind.

The waiter came and took our orders – peppermint tea for me and a latte for him – and we were once again left to our own devices.

I decided to bite the bullet and show him that I did _actually_ want to be in that café together with him. I didn’t know much about him, yet, so I figured a question related to his work might lead us to talking about something else.

“So, Aidon”, I started, feeling my legs fidget slightly, “how is your research going?”.

He seemed slightly surprised that I had asked him about his work out of all things, but he very quickly recovered from it, answering back: “It’s going well, thank you for asking. I got a suggestion to look into how Greek myths are affecting modern storytelling and lore development today, so I’ve started doing some initial forays into ways in which Greek myths get reinterpreted in new settings. It’s pretty interesting, for a researcher at least”, he added with a small laugh.

“Oh, so like… you look at how the myths get talked about today?”, I asked him back.

“Well, in a way, yes. But I am also looking at how these myths are getting remade for modern audiences. Internet has helped a lot, you know. The vast access to worldwide web means that I can be here, but contact a scholar focusing on a very specific part of Greek mythology, who I turn might suggest me to look at a source from a third place – and all we do is communicate this online. That’s one thing. The myths also get reprinted and reimagined – in books and movies, and every time this happens, something is changed; the myths keep evolving. They’re like fairy tales – except, of course, that what we consider fairy tales now are very happy stories, where evil and bad guys get punished, and good and kind guys get rewarded. The original myths are not fairy-tale like at all – there’s some seriously heavy stuff going on in them, but modern interpretations tweak them and change them, and adapt them to modern times.”

He said all of this in one go.

_Well, look at you, Mr Academic – you seem to really like what you do_ , I thought. Talking about his specialty clearly made him become alive and animated – he spoke with passion and enthusiasm, which in turn made me want to know about his interests with passion and enthusiasm.

He must’ve realized that he had said all of this in a quick succession and he blushed, very slightly, as he said: “I find it fascinating, really”.

“It sounds fascinating, when you speak about it like that”, I admitted to him.

He seemed to like my admittance a lot.

We got our tea and coffee then and I was about to try and resume our talks on his academic work when he suddenly asked me: “Why don’t you drink coffee?”. He quickly amended his question: “Not that you have to – I just… wondered”, he finished quietly.

“Oh, I just don’t like the taste of it. It tastes kind of vile, you know?”, I shrugged.

“You take that back, coffee is heavenly!”, he said, but with slightly upturned lips, which I knew meant that he was actually joking with me.

“Maybe, but I’ve never liked it. The only way I could drink coffee is with lots of sugar and milk and by that time, it would be sweet hot milk with a drop of coffee, so not really coffee anymore, wouldn’t it? So, I just abstain and choose tea instead”, I explained.

_Come on, Ella, you can flirt_ , my brain told me.

“Anyway, I would assume for an academic such as yourself, coffee is heavenly, because it helped you through all these hours of work and research in university, no?”, I added with a smile.

“Touche”, he said.

“So, you’ve always liked tea then? I assumed you at least tried coffee as you said you didn’t like the taste”, mixing his latte and adding some sugar into it.

“I tried, several times in fact. Every coffee-drinker I’ve met somehow thinks that the coffee _they_ are offering me, is going to make me love coffee. Well, it won’t and I’ve tried it many times. Now I just refuse point blank and stick to my tea – with most teas, I won’t end up spending money on something I won’t enjoy”, I added. “Although, I must admit, I’m especially partial to peppermint tea – something about it just clicks, you know? I really liked it. Very… minty”, I finished.

He wasn’t looking at me, but the mentioning of peppermint tea made him smile a very small smile, as if my admission had humoured him. He looked cute when he did that.

I figured it was time for me to ask another question from him. “How come you ended up studying Greek myths? Isn’t it a bit… peculiar, especially as you’re looking at something that’s your heritage, but it’s being reinvented at times of mass communication? Since you’re Greek and all”, I finished.

“Well, I’m afraid that’s my family’s influence on me. My family’s big on Greek mythology, you see. We all are, so I guess it was just natural”, he added, but with a serious face this time.

_Aha, he mentioned his family, now’s your turn to investigate_ , I thought to myself.

“Is your family, um… large?”, I asked him, realizing a second too late that maybe our acquaintance was a bit too fresh to inquire each other about our families, especially, as my question would spur him to ask about _my_ family and this wasn’t a topic I conversed often or easily. But I had played myself into a corner and had to quickly devise an exit strategy. Perhaps straight to point and honest, but short was the best approach?

He seemed to take a minute too long to answer, which made me wonder if his own family had issues or if, truly, I had stepped past the line we had currently drawn into the sand of our newly budding _whatever_ -ship. “You don’t have to answer, of course, if you don’t want to, I shouldn’t have asked”, I amended my question, after he still hadn’t looked up from his glass nor replied.

He looked out of the window then and for the first time, he looked both serious and sad. But the look was only there for a second and it seemed as if he shielded himself, and turned to me, and said neutrally: “My family is very Greek indeed. There’s quite a few of us altogether, with me being the oldest. Mother and father and all my siblings are very much into Greek mythology, although I’m the only one looking at its modern applications – the rest are very…. orthodox in their approach. But knowledge-wise, all my siblings are very well versed in Greek myths. It’s… familial.”

He coughed a little then, as if mentioning his family made him feel slightly uncomfortable.

“We’re all over the world, kind of, although we regularly meet up back at home. One of my brother’s is in aviation business, while the other is in maritime affairs. I chose the subject of old and buried matters, in a manner of speaking”, he elaborated further.

And then came the dreaded question I had yet found a way to give an ‘evasive, but conclusive’ answer to.

“And you?”, he asked.

Yeah, _what about me_ , I thought. Aidon seemed nice and all, but if I would tell him that I was all alone, it could mean trouble in the future if he ends up being not so nice. It’s not impossible, it happens. _But he thinks you have friends_ , I thought, so maybe a half-truth admission would be fine?

I took a deep breath and thought _here goes nothing_.

“I don’t really have a family. I was a foster child, a foundling, really. I have no idea who my mother and father are”, I admitted to him. “Mind you though, at one point in the future, I’m planning on doing these genetic tests – you know, where they tell you about potential illnesses you might be prone to or what type of genetic makeup you might have, so maybe those tests will reveal some about my parentage or genetics. Could be fun to find out that I’m part Inuit or some other exotic minority, although I’m happy as I am right now”, I added.

“In any way, I’ve grown up with this information and while it used to upset me, I’m fine with it now. My parents most likely either really loved me and had to give me up, or they didn’t love me at all, in which case I am better off without them anyway”, I shrugged.

He seemed to develop a very intense stare, because he hadn’t broken eye contact with me ever since I said that I had no parents. As I continued speaking, he almost seemed pained, and I wondered if he grasped at the deeper meaning I was conveying – that _I had been all alone, all this time_.

“Would you… want to know them, if they came forward now?”, he asked quietly, but still staring at me, his coffee forgotten and my tea getting cold.

I _had_ thought about this hypothetical scenario before and had imagined different situations, in which they turn up and discover it’s me, or where I find them; or where it even turns out that I was a kidnapped baby and my parents had been looking for me all this time. They were nice fantasies, but…. They were fantasies all the same. In the end, dreaming about meeting them would end up causing me pain and I had decided to try and avoid pain at all costs.

“Honestly? I have no idea”, I told him sincerely. “If they were decent people – maybe. But if they were bad people, then really no. And if they were decent, then why would they abandon me? There are a lot of questions connected to that part of my persona and I don’t like to dwell on these thoughts much, these days”, I added, hoping that he’d understand that I wanted to end this particular discussion.

“But what if they really.. didn’t choose to abandon you? What if that happened – out of their will?”, he pushed further.

I had to remind myself then that Aidon was _seemingly_ a nice man, who had probably grown up with a good family and had no idea what it meant to live with abandonment, dismissive people, or people who just.. made fun of you and expected the worst of you. _He couldn’t really understand_ , I reasoned to myself. _Try not to tell him off too badly_ , my heart reminded me.

“Aidon, I _get_ what you’re trying to say, but with all the respect – I have left that part of me behind and my genetic makeup is something I usually prefer not to discuss. And I would very much like to focus on something else instead”, I added, although I tried to convey him a small sad smile, so he’d let me off the hook, but wouldn’t think I was mad at him. It had been a mistake to ask about his family, but a small part of me had been curious.

I decided to pursue asking him questions instead, so before he could say anything back, I threw out my own inquiry: “Do you miss Greece? Or your friends there?”

What I had _actually_ wanted to ask was – do you miss anybody particular back in Greece? But I couldn’t have asked him that, not now, not yet, maybe never – this was the third time I had even seen the guy, and asking that question out loud would have meant implying that I _like_ -liked him or that I was prying into his private life. And I wasn’t even fully convinced _I_ like-liked him. _Liar!_ , I told myself then.

I got a strong suspicion, though, that he understood _exactly_ what I had thought in my head, because he developed a very satisfied look on his face as he gave me his answer: “No, not really. My family and I talk fairly often, so I’m up to date on the comings and goings that happen there, and with our family, it’s never been particularly easy, you know – strong-willed personalities and clashing opinions and all that. And, well, maybe it’s because of my particular area of specialization, but I don’t actually have that many friends – male or female”.

He knew. He _totally_ knew what I had meant when I had asked my question – why else would he have elaborated with specific sexes when answering my question.

I felt baffled, slightly. Aidon looked _good_. More than good. He dressed well, had good manners, he _smelled_ nice. He was well-educated, seemingly well-traveled as well. And he was… _friendless_? Not dating… _anybody?_

Well, _he wants to date you, doesn’t he?_ my brain told me. That’s not _not dating_ , he’s just trying to _date you_ , my conscious added.

He decided to elaborate: “It’s one of my younger brothers, who is a bit of a ladies’ man. Now, _he_ gets around a lot, and I’m saying that as his brother. He’s also good-looking and could charm the socks off a con-artist, so I’m not surprised, really. But I’m _nothing_ like him”, and when he said that last part, he looked me straight into my eyes and I understood that he had elaborated with a meaning. He had tried to convey that while his brother _might have been_ out to get the attention of many women, he – Aidon – was not.

I felt a stab of jealousy shine through, because suddenly, I wanted him for myself and for myself alone. _What the hell, Ella? You hardly know the guy_ , my brain screamed. It must be desire – just pure pheromones or something – maybe our body chemistry just clicked and that’s why I had been feeling like I wanted to have him around all the time. _Yeah, not at all those crazy dreams you’ve been having about this guy for the past 5 years, no?_

I wanted to peel back that blazer he had on and I wanted to smell his perfume and steal his jumper and wear it at home. I saw flashes from my dreams, where my dream guy had kissed me senseless, and by _God_ , I wondered if kissing Aidon would feel the same.

_Get it together girl – now is not the time to think on any of this!_

But then Aidon continued: “I don’t really miss _people_ – I see my brothers and my family quite often, considering I’ve been traveling back home quite a few times while I’ve been here. And my family can be a handful, so any interaction with them provides ample amount of memories. But I miss my dogs, so if they were here, that’d be perfect”.

A small dimple adorned his cheek and he had this very soft look in his eyes, which betrayed that he really liked his pets.

_Gorgeous, smart, well-traveled AND he likes dogs. Could he get any more perfect?_

“You have dogs? As in.. plural? How many? What kind? Any photos?”, I asked in rapid succession, suddenly excited – I loved dogs.

He seemed to like my enthusiastic reply, because that dimple became a smile and he blushed, very slightly.

“I have seven dogs – they’re all very different in size and mentality, but I love them all the same. I have no pictures of them on this phone, unfortunately, I’m sure you’d love to see them”, he replied back.

“Who is looking after them if you’re here and they’re back at home?”, I asked. “Your family?”

A very slight, almost not-visible wince passed his face: “Ahhh, no. They’re boarded, kind of. And of course, every time I am back, they’re with me. My family wouldn’t… take my dogs”, he finished.

With a small frown, I added: “They don’t like dogs? What are they – heartless? Who doesn’t like dogs?”

“Well, some of them are rather large, you know. And then there’s all the fur, of course. And I like knowing my dogs are with someone they like and who’ll take care of them well, you know?”, he finished.

With a quick look towards me, he continued: “I get it that _you_ like dogs a lot?”

I smiled: “I love dogs! I love animals, really. But dogs the most since they’re very affectionate and, well, they share their love freely. As humans, we are their whole lives, while they often only spend a portion of ours with us. If I could, I’d have a dog, now, but I can’t. In an ideal world, I’d have a cat as well, of course, but… I’d like a dog first.”

“Do you have a specific breed in mind? For your future, I mean?”

“Well... I’ve always been partial to big dogs, you know, although I like them in all shapes and sizes. I had thought maybe a Newfoundlander”, I mused.

“Wait, what?”, he sounded surprised. “But you’re…”, waving his hands, clearly not wanting to really insinuate that my potential future dog could easily weigh more than me.

“Are you trying to imply there’d be size issues?”, I told him, with a sly smile. I decided not to toy with him, and said: “Yes, of course I know how it would look. And they eat a lot and they drool. And they need special care, of course. And their life expectancy is not _that_ long because of their size, of course. But they’re large and snuggly and I _just_ love how they are and their personalities. I’d make sure they’d have the best life I could offer to them.”

He looked at me a bit weirdly then – eyes soft, almost… tenderly. He looked away then, at the window, at his hands on the table, towards the entrance.

_Maybe I said something wrong,_ I thought to myself.

Silence ensued for a minute or so and I honestly didn’t know what to do or where to look. He looked almost… _pained_ , and yet I had no idea why. 

To avoid keep staring at him, I decided to focus on my almost-cold tea instead, which I was finishing in one go, just about to swallow, when whatever he had been contemplating in his head had suddenly been solved, because his gaze snapped up and he looked at me and said: “You know, you really are one of the most beautiful women I’ve seen in my life and I keep fighting the urge to kiss you senseless”.

I pulled the tea in my mouth into my airways and had a violent coughing fit, nearly suffocating myself. My eyes were closed and watery, the coughs racked my throat, and I tried to get back to my bearings and tell Aidon to stop saying nonsense, but all I could hear and feel were a pair of heavy hand rubbing my back and the voice from my dreams, speaking into my ear, coaxing me to try and draw in a slow deep breath.

_Just like in my dreams_ , I thought.

“That’s it, take a nice and a slow breath, focus on getting your breathing back to normal”, his voice said.

Warm hands rubbing my back, making lazy circles. Scalding me, really, as every movement from his hands reminded me dreams where he had held in countless different ways and I _really_ didn’t want to remember those moments right there, after almost suffocating myself with tea.

“You… you _really_ know how to take a breath out of a girl, you know that, right?”, I rasped at him, with my eyes still closed, brushing the tears away, which had emerged during my coughing fit.

A chuckle emerged from somewhere in front of me. “What can I say? You have that effect on me every time I lay my eyes on you”, he added.

“Are you okay again?”, I heard him ask, tone serious.

“Yeah, yeah”, I wheezed back, still rubbing my throat, which suddenly felt dry and scratchy.

I heard him sit back in his own seat and only then did I open my eyes to look at him. Concern was evident in his eyes, but he held himself back, now that it was clear I was going to be able to breathe again.

All at once, it felt to me that the air around us had changed. Before, we had been talking, maybe flirting a little bit, but mostly just getting to know each other. Now it felt like we had suddenly jumped ten spaces ahead in the game and it made my head spin. I wasn’t really sure if I had liked his comment. I liked _him_ well enough, but I didn’t feel we were far enough in getting to know each other that it would have been acceptable for me to accept and reply to such comments just yet.

Even though the thought of kissing him breathless had literally entered my mind just some time before.

“That was some comment you made”, I started speaking again, looking at him.

His blue eyes looked apologetic, but also determined, when he said: “Ella – I’m confident enough to say what’s on my mind, despite our short acquaintance. I know what you’re thinking right now – you’re thinking I only want to get into your pants and then disappear into thin air. That’s not it, Ella, that’s not it at all. I want to get to know you better, but I don’t want you to mistake my interest as mere infatuation on my part. I couldn’t get you out of my mind when I was away on business the whole month. That… doesn’t happen to me a lot.”

He leaned back, looked out of the window, gulped, and then looked back at me.

“But I’d never force you into something you don’t want nor are comfortable with. It’s just that… I can _see_ that you’re not disinterested in me, which is why I even dared to say anything at all. I’ve got all the time in the world to see how this thing between us”, he moved his hand between the both of us, “progresses and I can take things as slow as you prefer. I just want you to give me a chance, a _real_ chance.”

I didn’t want to ruin the mood, but I felt the evening had soured, just slightly, as his words – though sweet and kind and not entirely unwelcome – seemed to come as suddenly as a summer rain on a hot day.

I would have been lying to myself if I would have said that I wasn’t interested in him as a _guy_. Even just after two dates – because, clearly, today and the last time could be counted as _dates_ -dates – I liked Aidon for who seemingly was: kind, funny, sex on legs, handsome to boot, and voice to D-I-E for.

But all these characteristics made it possible for him to really hurt me and hurt me _bad_. And I wasn’t built for drama, I had had enough drama to last a lifetime due to my past in the foster system. I just wanted a nice clean life, where I did my work, read some books, maybe took up a hobby or two, and quietly lived my life amongst flowers and greenery. _Maybe with a dog_ , I added. And… well, I didn’t know him very well.

“Aidon, you are a _really_ nice guy”, I said.

“But?”, he blurted, looking almost panicked and urging me to continue with his eyes.

And I decided to go for the nuclear opinion – I decided to tell him the truth as it was.

“But I have trust issues with people. You know a little bit about my past, but I can guarantee you, you cannot imagine even half of it. I’ve built myself a nice life, but it hasn’t been easy and I have had to fight for myself every step of the way. There wasn’t a lot of love going around when I was growing up”, and I felt the prickling of tears in my eyes. I hadn’t cried in almost five years and _now_ my emotions decide to show up? Thanks, heart.

I continued after gulping: “I’m not _even_ sure I could love someone the way they deserve to be loved. I’m not sure I could ever be the person you’d truly deserve”.

I was about to continue, when he interrupted: “How about you allow me to make this decision for myself – if you are the person I deserve or not? And… I’m not asking you to love me, Ella, I’m just asking permission to get to know you”. I sensed his hurt at my commentary, his words biting, just a little bit.

Then again – _I’m_ the person, who had gone all _‘I won’t love you like you deserve’_ , when he was probably thinking more like _‘I like dogs, you like dogs, aye?’_.

Maybe I really was deranged.

He grabbed one of my hands between his palms then, cradling it between his warm hands, his thumb doing a circling motion over my thumb, and looked into my eyes, saying quietly and gently: “Ella, I’m not proposing a marriage here. I’m not asking for more than you can give. That would be crazy. I’m asking to date you, officially, flowers and gifts and movie-nights and all. If you want it, of course. I’m asking for that chance – to prove myself to you; that you _can_ trust me, that I _could be_ worthy of you.”

He then raised one his arms and very gently touched my cheek with his outstretched fingers, continuing to speak, but looking slightly off the direction of my eyes: “I want to give you all of that and more, but if I have to earn your trust first, I will. All I’m asking from you is to genuinely believe that I will be doing my hardest to prove that I am a man of my words.”

I felt a very small tear emerge in the wall that I had built around my heart. The wall that said _beware, ye who enter_ , which I had built and reinforced continuously during the 22 years that I had been alive.

Would it _really_ be that bad to try and allow him to break it down, just a little?

Truth was – I, Ella Michaels, was a chicken.

I was afraid. I had been afraid my whole life. I had been so convinced that love was a rarity, that even though I had been chasing after love my whole life, I rarely allowed love to catch up with me – I had simply convinced myself that love existed only in Lifetime movies and romance novels, with semi-naked people on their covers. And he wasn’t even proposing love – he was offering friendship, with the potential for _more_.

_Be brave, turtle dove_ , my heart told me.

_Be fearless_ , my brain told.

“Okay”, I said, looking at him. “We can try – both of us. I’ll try. I…”, somewhat helplessly, I wasn’t sure what to tell him. I couldn’t tell him that _sure, I’ll try, but I don’t think it’s going to happen_ – that’s like admitting defeat at the start-line.

“That’s a start, _Ells_ ”, Aidon said, grasping my hand once more, and giving me one of his half-smiles.

_Did he just call me Ells?_

***

We paid for our tea and coffee. He tried to insist on paying himself, but I remained resolute and paid for my own tea. He vowed that next time it was all on him. A _small_ part in me felt _slightly_ happy about it, that he wanted to do this, it seemed… _sweet_.

I thought we’d go our separate ways again, as we had the last time, but he insisted knowing where I parked, and hearing that I had parked at the college campus, refused to let me go there alone and thus we walked, together, to my pickup, where we stood, trying to bid our goodbyes for the evening.

“Could you let me know that you got home alright?”, he asked, eyeing my obviously beaten pickup with slight concern.

My pickup was like a tank – it went through everything and hardly failed on me, but the notion of concern was sweet nonetheless.

“Yeah, sure”, is what I gave him as a reply.

I started the pickup, waved at him, and drove home, all the while playing all of our conversation in my head.

He was sweet on me, that much was sure. But was it alright to do any of this?

As I got home, I sent Aidon a message that I got home okay.

His reply was swift.

_Thanks for letting me know – it makes me feel better to know you’re home safe and sound! I had a nice time with you today, could we repeat it sometime next week? Let me know how your schedule looks like – I’ll clear mine according to yours :)_


	9. Selenicereus grandiflorus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aidon has a surprise for Ella.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The text is not beta-read, English is my second language. 
> 
> Has been inspired by Lore Olympus (creator Rachel Smythe), original Greek mythology, and some others. 
> 
> Also: a very short chapter

Three days later, just as I was about to leave work in the evening and _finally_ go home after an exhausting day, I got an unexpected, but not altogether unwanted message from Aidon.

_Hey! I know we’re not yet scheduled to meet, but would you mind meeting me for about 30 minutes tonight? I have a surprise for you :)_

A few things crossed my mind.

A: I was ridiculously enamoured with a guy I had known for such a short time, so much so that my immediate thought had been _Yes, please_

B: _This_ was getting out of hand

C: But I really really liked him and felt attracted to him nonetheless

_Oh, Ella – you’ve got it bad, girl._

I was dirty, tired, and had had a full day of work. I was **not** a date-material right now.

Like magic, I heard another _bzzt_ sound, as another message came from Aidon.

_I know you’ve must have had a long day, but I promise it’ll be worth it and it’ll only take an extra half an hour. Bonus: you get to see me and I get to see you :)_

And what’s life without a little adventure?

_Oh, alright, I’ll meet you. But I’m tired, hungry, dirty, and not much of a talker after a full day of work. You’ve been warned Mr I like to live Dangerously._

_No worries – there won’t be much talking needed if you don’t feel up to it. It’s more of a visual thing anyway ;)_

What the hell?

***

I got to where Aidon told me to come, parked my pickup, and waited. Not even 5 minutes later I saw him walking towards me, clearly in a happy mood. I gave him a weak smile in return, but due to being exhausted and grimy, I was pretty sure it looked more like a grimace than an actual smile.

“Hey you”, he greeted me.

I might have grumbled back a low-toned “Hi!” in return.

“You weren’t kidding about the no-talk policy, huh?” he asked, clearly humoured. “No worries, I can do the talking if you don’t mind – you can grunt back and I’ll have fun deciphering your answers, okay?” he asked in return, still smiling.

“I **can** talk, but after spending all day answering questions on which shovel or soil to use, or people coming to complain how their very delicate orchids have died because we clearly must’ve sold them a dying plant, and not them killing it due to wrong light and bad watering habits, I’m on a really thin leash and all I want is to shower, to eat, and to go to bed”, I spoke, still grumbling.

_Bitchy much, Ella?_

“Well, I cannot help you with the shower and the bed – you’ll have to wait a bit for that; but I do have a sandwich for you – for food?” he finished, making his sentence sound like an offer with a question.

_Wait what? He brought me food?_

I stopped walking and looked at Aidon, who had also now stopped walking three spaces ahead of me, as I asked, with a small frown: “You brought me food?”

He looked slightly surprised at my question, but said, looking _almost_ blushing in the evening street lights: “Well, yeah – you said you were hungry and I did ask you to come and meet me. I couldn’t let you starve, could I?”

My heart went _thud-thud-thud_ very quickly. _This is so bad_ , I thought. _I like him so much already and now he brought me a sandwich_. _A sandwich! When I'm starving - it's like... giving water to a dried basil, it gets invigorated immediately._

_Oooh girl, a man who looks after your stomach is a good man_ , my inner grandma aka my heart told me.

_Yeah well, you don’t know where that sandwich came from. What if he poisoned it?_ retorted my brain in reply.

“Ella, it’s just a sandwich, so you could enjoy the reason I brought you here and not think of robbing the nearest McDonalds”, he said, quietly and clearing his throat, clearly feeling a bit uncomfortable as I continued to look at him silently while my brain went _eeeeeeeek_.

“Thank you”, I said huskily, as I went to grab the bag I had just noticed him holding.

Our fingers touched as I took the bag with a sandwich from his own hand and I felt electrified. Every time, without a beat – every time I touched him it felt like a joyous reunion of a touch that I had been craving for the longest time.

“I… wasn’t sure what you’d eat, so I got you something without meat. I hope that’s okay”, he told me, suddenly looking concerned.

I felt like I had been coated in warm liquid. This is what normal men did… right? To... women they liked?

“You didn’t have to, Aidon, but thank you nonetheless”, I told him, trying to give him a sincere smile this time.

He blushed. This time I was sure of it, because his cheeks looked reddish even in the dimmed light emanating from the lamp posts.

He coughed slightly, and looked ahead, and told me: “Eat up – we’re not going to be allowed in with food or drink in hand.”

As I tried eating my sandwich – trying to look as poised as possible and not like I hadn’t had a drop of food in the past three weeks, which is how I had been feeling for the past four hours of my shift – I was back to wondering exactly where was Aidon taking me. We turned a few corners, crossed a few streets, walked across a public park, until…

We had arrived at the university botanical gardens.

Why was he taking me to the university botanical gardens at… 22 o’clock on a work day? I was pretty sure they were closed and even when opened, I had thought they were only for university students and staff.

“Aidon, I’m not sure they’re opened and I’m not a university student, so I’m ––“, I started to say.

“They’re opened, all night today, and there are no restrictions tonight either. Come on, let’s get in”, he said, motioning for me to follow.

I dropped the half-eaten sandwich back into the bag, placed it in my own handbag, and followed him up the stairs in front of us.

What should’ve been a building coated in darkness, was a building well-lit. And with a line of people snaking out of the door.

“Ummm… care to share what we’re doing here?” I asked him, eyeing the other people waiting to enter.

“I’m taking you to see their Selenicereus grandiflorus – they’ve been waiting for it to bloom for a few days now and it did. And as you know, the bloom will only last a short time. And well… I thought you might like seeing it”, he finished, sheepishly.

A flowering cactus. He had brought me to see a night-blooming and currently flowering cactus. A cactus which sheds its bloom very quickly and blooms rarely. 

As he continued looking down to me, a smile broke out on my face.

“They have it and it bloomed? Really? And we get to see it?”

Excitement in my voice clearly made him happy, because one of his dimples appeared and he nodded.

As we slowly moved into the building and closer to the cacti display area, I kept thinking about Aidon – how he had thought I _might_ have liked seeing this flowering plant, so he staged this little surprise, even when I told him that I was being a grump, because I had been working all day.

And there it stood. Without its bloom, the cactus would’ve looked ordinary. But in the slightly dimmed light, its bloom looked magnificent – a large white bloom, with an orangish crown of petals surrounding the central bloom like a lion’s mane. The air around it smelled of vanilla and together with the tired and slightly sleepy feeling I had gotten after having some food, I felt… content. Aidon had made me feel content.

_Oh man… I’ve really got it bad indeed_.

As we turned away from the cacti area and started walking towards the exit, he asked: “I hope it was worth of delaying your arrival home by half an hour?”

“Oh, it was worth it”, I replied excitedly. “How did you know about it?”

“I… heard someone mention it and thought you might appreciate seeing it”, he said back. “You know, because you’re one with the plants?” he said, with a slight questioning tone.

“I did – I liked seeing it. I hadn’t seen one bloom before and it’s rare enough, because the bloom dies very quickly. Thank you!” and I turned to face him. “Thank you so much! Even if you did have to put up with my grouchy ass for a while”, I added apologetically.

“You can be a grouch every day – all the more reason to try and cheer you up”, he replied in turn.

_That was flirting in real life, wasn’t it? He was totally flirting with me. What do I do? Helllp._

Brain-overload. Boom.

“Ummm.. yes”, is what I replied.

_Hole in the ground – meet Ella. Ella, meet hole in the ground, where you will stay until you wither and die due to nonsensical answer you just gave to him_.

_Somebody present me with mercy, now_ , I begged in my head.

“Uhm... that is, yes, it cheered me up; it was... nice”, I continued to blab. Blush creeped up from my neck.

_Ella, if you know what’s good for you, shut up now. You put your foot in your mouth already – let’s try not to make it worse, shall we?_

Aidon chuckled. He actually chuckled at what I had replied.

“Sorry. I’m tired. And I blab. When I’m tired. Or nervous. But I’m tired right now”, I continued to speak, digging that pit deeper and deeper every second I was trying to show how _not_ nervous I was.

What. the. hell. Why couldn’t I just shut up? Who removed the control rods?

I shut my mouth then, and as Aidon didn’t say a word either, we just kept walking back towards where I had parked my pickup, in silence.

_Say something to him!_ I screamed to myself in my head.

“So..”, as I started, just as Aidon was saying “I guess...” and we both faltered. He motioned for me to go first and I thought _here goes nothing_

“So, this was a nice surprise. Thank you for taking your time to ask me to come here. Even if you had to feed my crabby ass”, I said, with a small smile.

“Does that mean I can do it again, if I see something you might be interested in?” he asked, brazenly.

“Sure. And I’ll try to keep an open mind for the future”, I replied.

He motioned at my pickup, saying: “I guess now it’s time for you to go – chariot awaits and all”.

“Ahh, but you see, those mice actually are steel and machine stallions, intent to never strand me on the side of the road nor, you know, disappear and become actual mice”, I answered to him, trying to tease.

Aidon barked out a laugh. “No hope for a glass shoe here then – to whisk you away to a kingdom?”

“None whatsoever, I’m afraid. More like a combat boot with a steel toe”, I replied as I climbed into my car and waited for him to walk away slightly, so I could turn the ignition and go.

As he stood on the sidewalk, just in front of my car, I had a sense of _deja-vu_ – he waved, I waved, I backed out of the parking space and left.

15 minutes later I was at home and on an impulse, sent Aidon a message.

_This Cinderella is done and done – I’m off to fall asleep. Thank you for a lovely surprise, though – totally worth it!_

His reply came quickly, as if he had waited for my message.

_Anytime, Ella, anytime :)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's still a slow burn (and it will continue to be one for a while - I have a few more emotional chapters in mind, which need to be framed), but I hope everybody enjoys it the same.


	10. Distance makes the heart fonder

After that, I didn’t see Aidon again for almost two weeks.

Not because he hadn’t wanted to see me, but because _I_ had hardly had a moment to take a breath. What had been a long day of work turned into two weeks of a slog, where I felt stretched thin like an outstretched piece of gum.

First, it was my school, where I suddenly realized that I had all these final assignments to do if I actually wanted to finish, which I did. So, I threw myself into finishing off those loose ends, clearing assignments, getting excited over the fact that I was going to be _done_. After submitting everything, I was going to have that paper and I was going to be truly done. D-O-N-E. I had loved school, but I wanted to have some free time for myself, and finishing would give me that. No-one could say then that I had let my childhood get the better of me. And it opened up so many opportunities – further schooling, a better job, a higher wage – maybe even relocating somewhere else. Maybe my own company.

 _Ahh, a girl can dream_ , I thought.

Second – my work went belly-up. Two colleagues suddenly fell ill the same week and there wasn’t enough manpower to man the store, so I picked up extra shifts and stayed longer than strictly necessary. One extraordinary long shift work became so common that I saw home less and less. _Good_ for my bank account, _not_ so good for my sleep. Or for any communication with Aidon, which I kind of _missed_ if I allowed myself to think about it.

Then Mrs Gonzales sprained her ankle and I offered to pick up her food from the store and her books from the library and spend some time with her in the evenings, if she so wished, and if I had time over from my overly long shifts. I could only pray for some unknown deity that she hadn’t managed to kill any of her plants in-between, but with restricted movement and her confined to home, that was bound to happen sooner than later. I almost brought home a large bag of soil already, but opted not to tempt fate by doing that, thinking that maybe if I wouldn’t prepare, she wouldn’t kill another one of her plants. I would have believed that she actually _hated_ her plants, based on her track record, but she seemed to genuinely love greenery in her flat and she was just a horrendously bad plant owner. But she was sweet and she was fine with me not talking much while I visited her, because I was so tired, so I wasn’t going to just ignore her and her sprained ankle. Plus – I got fed in cookies, which were always _amazing_.

I worried that Aidon might have thought I was blowing him off due to not being available for meeting him, especially as I had promised to try and actually consider his suit for _really_ dating me, but he seemed to be understanding and resumed to wait until my schedule cleared up a little bit. In-between I discovered that he was an avid texter, if given a chance, which he now ruthlessly used, as all other avenues of communication were temporarily on hold.

We started talking more in our messages – about books we had read, movies we had seen, places Aidon had visited, things he had experienced. I found out he liked musicals; he found out that I liked to rage-bake. I promised I’d make him my triple-chocolate cake one day.

He flirted so shamelessly with me via his messages that I nicknamed him ‘Scoundrel’ in my phone.

I _loved_ it.

There hadn’t been an express declaration of _yup, we’re dating now_ , but I think we both had realized – or rather, _I had_ realized – that I _liked_ him, that he seemed to respect any and every boundary I had in place for us, and I allowed myself to unshackle some of the strong convictions I had, thinking that there was no harm in shamelessly flirting via phone messages. My attempts at flirting with him were horribly bad sometimes, but he didn’t seem to mind and I gracefully allowed him to flirt more with me than I flirted back with him. I was slightly worried how I’d react to seeing him again, after so many flirty messages via the phone, afraid that I’d once again blush and not be able to talk to him in a calm and collected manner, but… I had also decided to worry about that when it was time for us to actually see each other again. Until then I had to content myself with his smileys in his messages.

James must’ve noticed that I was looking at my phone a lot, and while working, joked one day that they could pinpoint my exact location in the store at any given time, because my phone kept buzzing constantly. I just stuck my tongue out at him and he laughed, telling me to keep my secrets if I so badly wanted to guard them.

I was beginning to be _happy_ all the time.

Happy, because Aidon texted me random images of cute dogs that he had seen while out and about.

Happy, because despite working myself to a point of exhaustion, I just _couldn’t_ wait to see him again.

He made me want to go out of this world, this City that I had declared my safe haven, my home – to explore, to travel, to eat exotic foods and to see faraway places. I had had all of those desires before, but he made me want to see things with _him_ , travel with _him_ , eat those foods with _him_ – whereas previously I had always imagined me doing those things alone.

I had given the devil my finger, and he took my whole hand, as they say.

C _rappy-crap_ , I thought. It felt a little bit like I had stepped on quicksand and hadn’t noticed until I was in knee-deep.

I had very quickly come to expect Aidon’s messages to me – the _Good mornings_ and _Good nights_ , the occasional _love_ as an endearment, the jokes and the book recommendations. The _love_ endearment had bugged my eyes out at first, but I had told myself that he’s Greek – they’re affectionate and emotional.

_Yeah, and that hasn't got anything to do with the fact that the guy’s voice sounds di-vi-ne and his hands feel like silk on your skin, and you keep dreaming about him telling you ‘love’ in your dreams, huh? Ella, you’re delusional._

If I hadn’t been so receptive to it all, I might have looked at it from the sidelines and warned myself for moving too fast, getting too close to the edge, to becoming too enmeshed with a guy I still didn’t know very well.

But the other half of me wanted it. Wanted it so badly that every time my phone went _bzzt_ , I was sure _I_ went _bzzt_.

The two-week frenzy came to a head one night, when I had once again returned to my tiny home, brushed my teeth and had fallen to dead-like sleep, when I had one of the most intense sexual dreams in years. It was a dream I hadn’t had before, although it started out the same – me, my dream guy, passionate sex. What was different this time, was that I just _knew_ , that the dream guy _was_ Aidon, and when I felt myself being pinned down, him pumping into me at an increased pace, edging me towards bliss, urging me to feel my release, that I had seen myself have passionate, almost wild sex with Aidon instead. Not the dream guy, but Aidon. Aidon, whose voice, hands, and lips all belonged to my dream guy, but whose face had now replaced the faceless imagery that had remained in my head for the past five years.

Awake, hot and bothered by my dreams, I had given myself the release I had craved, imagining Aidon’s hands and Aidon’s voice as he urged me to come for him, to moan my pleasure into his ears, and after seeing stars in my eyes from the power of my orgasm, I fell into a deep slumber, where I dreamt of starry midnights, open fields, and long walks – never alone, always with Aidon by my side.


	11. Calm before the storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aidon and Ella have a series of dates. Ella realises that things with Aidon could be temporary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This text is not beta-read, English is my second language.
> 
> The text contains characterisation and content from Lore Olympus (creator Rachel Smythe), original Greek mythology, and some others.

After our two weeks of quiet, Aidon and I quickly developed a pattern. Had I dared to look into my heart a bit more, I would’ve noticed that Aidon had settled into it pretty well and had made a cozy corner out for himself, and it was only my brain that was still holding strong behind that wall of separation I had been fortifying for years.

Normally that would’ve been the moment I would have panicked and gone all _fuck fuck fuck_.

But since this was Aidon… I was _smitten_.

I waited for our dates like breaths of air. I felt like I was underwater and every time I saw him, he was the bubble of air I had been given for breath. Too little for too long and I’d drown.

Oh, how I anticipated seeing him – nothing compared to it.

Since I had not yet asked Aidon to visit me at my home and neither had he showed me his, our dates ended up being us going somewhere, doing something, at least two times a week. A café visit here, a museum visit there, a walk in the park. 

***

During one of the dates, Aidon took me bowling. I sucked at it so bad, that in one of the games, I managed to throw zero for at least half of my tries. I saw Aidon smirk a little at exactly _how_ bad I was, but he, ever patient, ever the gentleman, didn’t laugh at me, took time to teach me, and teased me for trying to game him with my claims of ‘inexperience’. I had truly and well enjoyed our time spent at the bowling alley.

***

One time we went to that book café again, where he had almost made me choke on my tea, and we played cards, while drinking coffee and tea. _Now_ cards I could play, but I decided to give him a taste of his medicine, pretending that I had no idea what he was doing, but insisting that he shouldn’t help me, because I didn’t want him to see my cards and _it wouldn’t be fair_ , I had told him. If we would have played for money or for clothes – I couldn’t deny that the thought of playing strip-poker with him _didn’t_ cross my mind – he would have been sitting in front of me either moneyless or naked as the day he was born. I was _good_ at cards and he lost, badly. He just stared at me incredulously and I was almost certain he muttered a quiet _I have never wanted you more than right now,_ at one point, clearly meant for his ears only, and not for me, but his confession on being turned on by me winning over him certainly made my heart do somersaults, whether I wanted it or not.

 _Oh Aidon, I’d love to play strip-poker with you_, I thought in my head, blush creeping up my face.

***

In a date to the City Museum, he grabbed my hand in the Ancient Civilizations artefacts’ room and didn’t let go until we stepped out of the building – a whole three hours later – suddenly noticing that he had been holding on to my hand for the whole duration of the visit. I chose to think then, and later continued to uphold that belief, that he decided to wing it, test his luck, deliberately grabbing my hand, and seeing that I hadn’t let go, just rolled with it.

We opted to hold hands ever since. It was nice. His hands were much larger than mine, so it felt like my hands were cradled. His skin was soft, his hands were warm.

I felt that feeling of contentment again.

Somewhere, at the back of my mind, some _thing_ creeped a little. That fear, visceral fear of _everything is too good right now – something’s going to happen_ , but when things kept going on well, I slowly started to let go of that fear. I mean… I had had a lot of crap happen to me during my life, _maybe it was my time for things to go well now_ , I thought to myself.

***

Since most of the date ideas originated from him – in fact, quite a few times I was only told a time and a place for our meetings – all within City limits and in well-lit and well-visited areas, probably for my comfort, I decided that I wanted to do something too. Something that spelled _me_ , but where Aidon would enjoy spending his time as well. I also wanted the date to be a free or nearly free of charge, because although I insisted on paying my own way, more than half of the times Aidon won out and paid for our dates and our entertainment, and I didn’t want there to be another discussion on why he wanted to pay. It didn’t cause as much friction between us as it did in the beginning, but we still had a small tug-of-war every time it came time to pay for our dates, and he’d give me this look, this look of _you’re not going to pay, put your money back where it came from_.

It was _nice_ , but I also didn’t feel entirely comfortable with that. I could pay my own way and I didn’t want Aidon to think I was using him, as he was clearly well-off despite being in the academia. He practically growled at me once for trying to pay our shared bill, and told me, in nice words and with a kind voice that _he could afford this and he didn’t want me to put even a cent of the money I had worked tirelessly for weeks at a time_ towards paying for our date nights.

Chivalry was _not_ dead with this guy.

Still, I kept a running tally in my head over what he _had_ spent on our dates and where he had taken me, and I decided that I needed to do something. Take him somewhere nice, where he couldn’t insist on paying, which meant that it had to be almost free.

I decided to take him to the nearby National Park, which hosted an experimental ‘Garden of Eden’ type of a plant settlement, where plants from all over the world had been brought and planted to see how they’d react to being grown in this soil and environment. It meant that in that part of the park, you could walk between trees and plants from all over the world, smell and see all these weird flowers and shrubbery, which you’d otherwise have to travel for. That part of the park had fascinated me from the moment I had moved to the area and a small part of me hoped that maybe someday I could work at this part of the park section. I saw Aidon being slightly surprised at our destination when I ended up driving us to the park entrance, but he schooled his face well and he must’ve seen how I excited I had been, so he happily obliged. As we walked through different sections of ‘Eden’, I happily explained to him what plants we were seeing and where they’d grow natively and I had felt so much in my own element, that I think it made _him_ happy that _I_ was so happy to be there.

As evening was coming in fast, I drove us up into the small hill and the parking lot overlooking the area, with the City in the distance, and we sat at the back of my pickup, holding hands and looking up at the stars. The action had jogged a memory – _no_ , a dream – in me that I had had with my mystery guy in it, where he had held me in his arms, as we’d been sitting on another open field during the night and had been looking up at the stars, not even talking, just enjoying each other’s presence. As we were star-gazing in my pickup, I felt Aidon occasionally shift his eyes to me, as if he wanted to memorize _me_ looking at the stars, but every time I tried to catch him doing that, he pretended to look up as well. It made me happy though – that he wanted to gaze at me – so as I threaded my fingers through his, all my heart was telling me was _I want to do this with him all the time_.

***

But our first kiss – the kiss where I could absolutely claim that I kissed Aidon, not my imaginary dream guy – happened under a shady tree at the shores of the lake at the outskirts of the City.

It was also one of the rare times I saw Aidon in something other than a full business suit and could hardly contain my excitement as I liked seeing him in casual clothes, but he seemingly always preferred to dress as if he had to go and walk the runway at any given moment. So, when he proposed to go and visit the lakeside, I was certain I’d be seeing him in casual clothing once more, and got ridiculously excited over the prospect.

‘Casual’ for the lakeside in that case meant that Aidon was wearing _jeans_ with a pullover, with a lot more of him wrapped up than I had expected, but somehow he ended up looking endearingly cute in his clothes. Aidon in _jeans_ looked like he had been moulded for them.

I _happily_ and _secretly_ ogled. 

It was there that I finally decided that I wanted to give in to that urge to kiss him and kiss him good, and figured that there was no place and time better than there and then.

I had gotten pretty good at allowing my heart sing, when I thought of Aidon, and if I was going to kiss him, I might have as well as give it a go at my best.

To say that that he was surprised, would be an understatement, because as my lips touched his, he didn’t move a single muscle or breathe a single breath – it looked like he was either mesmerized or scared that I would change my mind. But as I grabbed a hold of his pullover and made a move to pull him closer to me, to let him know that I had **meant** to kiss him, he suddenly spun to life and kissed me with the ferocity that I was sure my heart wanted to leap out of my chest. He kissed me until I was breathless and I kissed him back until he needed to rest his fast-beating heart.

I would never forget the look of utter amazement on his face after I had kissed him and resurfaced later with the need to breathe.

“Sweetness, you kissed me! You actually kissed me!” and he smiled his radiant smile at me and I felt like the Sun and the Moon and the stars had all aligned for me that evening. It _felt_ magical.

***

I had been in a such a good mood during those weeks that I hadn’t even paid attention to the fact that my official graduation ceremony had passed and I was officially done with my community college programme for the time being. I didn’t really care for the pomp and pageantry, so I hadn’t paid attention to the finishing procedures, other than being sure that I had all my credits and I was going to get my paper.

It was only after Aidon had asked me about the ceremony and whether I’d allow him to come and see me finish, that I had to regretfully inform him that it had already passed and that I was already done.

It was our first _almost-fight_ , because he had been so upset that I had not informed him of the possibility of a ceremony.

“Sweets, I _wanted_ to come and see you walk those boards and get your diploma for finishing on top of your class. I wanted to shower you with flowers and take you to a dinner and… and you just made me feel like you wouldn’t have wanted me there at all”, he had said emotionally.

I had tried to explain to him that:

A: I had not walked _even_ my high school graduation, choosing to get my diploma from the administration office instead, so the ceremony really wasn’t that big of a deal to me

And

B: that I had truly and well simply forgotten that there even _was_ a ceremony planned for people like me; that I had been so wrapped up in work, and my duties, and _him_ , that I simply forgot. 

But for _him_ , missing that ceremony signified a fear that I didn’t actually consider the two of us important enough to celebrate that milestone together. Never mind that our relationship – _our relationship_ – was still short and new, but I got his fears. He thought that despite our progress – _my progress_ in opening up to him, in seeing him as a _good trustworthy guy_ , I had still decided to remain closed off to him in this.

That hadn’t been the truth – I had simply assigned no importance to that particular event.

But… _bugger crap fuck -_ he had.

He sulked for like a half a day, but in the end, he accepted my explanation of it being just a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and vowed to celebrate me finishing community college. Considering he himself had a PhD, I found the notion of celebrating community college tad silly, but as he looked into my eyes with his own darkened eyes, passion and another emotion, I dared not call _love_ , swirling around in them, I realized that he wanted to celebrate it _for_ me – for something I had worked hard on and earned praise for and he wanted to make _me_ feel good about it. _Well, if you insist_ , I felt my heart purr at him.

So, when he told me to dress up and be ready to be amazed, I had expected us to go to a restaurant or some other high-end dining establishment, but when we ended up entering a residential building nearby the local university, I still hadn’t put two and two together and realized that he was taking me into _his_ home.

Maybe it had been for the best, because the moment I realized where we were, all my old anxieties and insecurities and feelings of ‘I’m not ready for this’ resurfaced and he had to spend five minutes reassuring me that he had _no_ expectations of anything from that evening, that he had just wanted to cook me a four-course dinner and that his home kitchen was best equipped for the task. Aidon then gave me a wolfish grin and said in an undertone _he wouldn’t have wanted to share me with the other restaurant goers anyway, because he would have had to keep other men at bay with a ten-foot-pole at the sight of me_.

Subtle he was _not_ that evening.

After he had kissed me off my feet and given me a glass of very weak French cider, since I generally tried to avoid alcohol, he told me to get comfortable, because he had a lady to impress and he'd better got to it.

His home, however, didn’t look like _anything_ I had imagined at all. I had thought it would have been covered in books and notes and paintings and the like – relative to his specialty – but his home was almost spartan. He noticed me very discreetly looking around, laughed and kissed me, and told me to go crazy exploring, saying: “I know you want to.”

So, as I explored his things, I had noticed that it was very… bare. Sure, I knew that he was a _visiting_ research fellow, but I had expected his home for the time being to display a bit more stability than what I was witnessing then. My own place, though small, still felt homey, as I thought I had managed to make it look like it was lived in and represented _me_ , not just white walls and second-hand furniture. However, his living quarters gave me a stark reminder that he was here _temporarily_ , that all this happiness and giddiness I had been feeling was fleeting, because he was sure to leave sooner or later, and then what? He’d be in Greece or God-knows where and I’d be here – unable to visit him or see him maybe a few times a year? I hardly imagined moving somewhere else to live with him and becoming dependent on his income, and I wouldn’t have wanted him to stunt his academic career for me either.

My heart clenched a little.

That ‘barely there’ existence reminded me why I had been so reluctant to accept _this_ – us, me and him, together. Because while he’d promise to remember me and hold the torch for me in his heart, long-distance relationships wouldn’t work out unless there would be an end date in sight, but with us and our great differences in employability, I didn’t root for high probabilities. I felt a bit dampened in spirits after realizing that thought.

 _If this were a movie_ , I thought then _, there would be a sad 80s saxophone playing in the background now._

Aidon had definitely sensed that something was off by the time he served us food, but he must have chalked it on me being surprised with a visit to his apartment, not due to the _state_ of his apartment. Not due the state of me in that apartment, slowly feeling like there were piece of my heart peeling away.

 _Be brave, be strong_ , my heart told me. _This may not go as you think it will_.

Aside from that, everything else was magnificent. Aidon was a _great_ cook and there was something incredibly primal and sexy about a guy, wearing an apron, cooking for a woman he liked. I deliberately pushed away the thoughts over his leaving and decided to enjoy the evening, choosing to allow these waves of emotions to hit me – the food he had made, the way his eyes made my heart speed up, his hands made me feel, and his voice made me shiver.

If I was going to be sad, I’d have _all_ the time in the world to be sad later.

It was in his apartment that I realized that despite his eventual departure, I still _wanted_ Aidon like I had never wanted anybody before; that I was getting very close to the point of no return, where not only was I willing, but also very enthusiastic, over the possibility of sleeping with him.

It struck me as a surprise, but then again… not really. He had lit a match in me, made me want to be reckless and easygoing with him. And… despite my fears, I had _grown_ to trust him, even a little. Why not then sleep with the one guy, who – even if he were to leave and I to remain – would at least make my first _actual_ physical sexual experience into something memorable?

And as if the air around us could read my mind, it was after we had eaten and had been talking as usual, when the mood suddenly changed, the air got charged, and we lunged at each other, desperate to burn, desperate to fan the flame igniting our desires. He was ever the gentleman, but I encouraged him further and further, until I was half-naked in his lap, feeling his very prominent arousal, and him pleading me – with his eyes and with his voice – to consider very carefully whether I wanted to continue further or stop there.

“Tell me to stop, Sweetheart. Tell me to stop”, he pleaded.

My lust-filled heart told me to spur him on, to give in to this feeling, and to finally allow _him_ to climb with me to depths I had never climbed with any other.

“Don’t stop”, I told him.

Onwards and upwards our emotions and heated kisses soared, until his hands began to wander – lower and lower. I felt drunk on lust and want and need.

Aidon kissed my neck, scraping his teeth alongside the tender place between my neck and my shoulder, which made me shudder in delight and my toes to curl.

“Sweetness, tell me stop”, he pleaded once more.

And… although I had felt that I was _ready_ , I was _there_ , in actuality… he had known. How on Earth had Aidon known, I had no idea. But despite the lust and hot air and the want, my brain had wanted to pull the reins. And he had known it and asked me.

So I did – I asked him to stop.

And he did.

With feeling the greatest reluctance, I told him I wanted to go no further, and although his arousal felt _very_ prominent, he backed away as he had promised.

Aidon – ever the gentleman and gentle as a man. 

I felt confused then. Relieved. But also... _empty_. I still desired – desperately wanting to rip his clothes off, but…

As our heated bodies and minds were cooling down, Aidon continued kissing me, slowly whispering words into my ears. How I was beautiful, and sexy, and so desirable that I had made him feel like a boy once again, excited and overeager.

He gave me a promise then. That he’d always stop when he’d feel that I was on the edge, but not willing to jump _off_ the edge of that final step. But that when he’d know I was ready and I felt I was ready too, he’d promise me pleasures high enough I wouldn’t be able to walk afterwards.

I happily accepted the promise and a consolation prize of cuddles with the hulk of man, who had just minutes before made me feel like my skin had been on exquisite fire.

We ended up cuddling on his couch for a while, and as I listened to his steady heartbeat, I felt that all the calm in the world was at my fingertips. At that point in time, all as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the sad 80s saxophone, I meant something like in George Michael's 'Careless whisper', available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izGwDsrQ1eQ
> 
> Also, in my head, Ella's a bit like the lyrics in Kyle Minogue's 'I should be so lucky' - except she's in denial, slightly, available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_TvpBwSZDM


	12. Shattered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella gets an unexpected surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This text is not beta-read and English is my second language. 
> 
> The text contains references, characters, and similarities to that of Lore Olympus (creator Rachel Smythe), the original Greek mythology, and some others. I claim no ownership of these materials.

Until it _wasn’t_.

The rumbles of a big break came three weeks after our intense make-out session at his place, when he told me that he urgently needed to go to Europe for at least week and a half, but probably two whole weeks. We said hasty, but emotional goodbyes, and he promised to come to me immediately after his return. We had only been dating for a few months by that time, but I felt like I had grown very attached to being near him all the time.

I should have steeled my heart then.

On the third day after his departure, I realized that this might soon be my reality. That him leaving, me staying behind, hoping and waiting, could be my everyday life if, at one point, he was to leave and return to Europe permanently. It wasn’t a _chance_ that he might have had to leave, it was a _certainty_ due to the type of the position he held; the question was just in time - when.

For the first time in months, I sulked. It was evident I had a bad mood and my colleagues steered clear of me, although I held reign to my emotions at work.

And after my teenage years, I hardly got angry anymore. For me to be moody, I really had to be off.

I even declined the Faradays’ request to babysit, citing that I had _other plans_ , which I never did. I didn’t even feel sorry about it – I was _that_ off the mood over Aidon’s eventual departure and the loss of him I was certain to endure in the future.

I just didn’t know at the time that I was going to get the shock of my lifetime very soon.

***

The real chasm arrived four days before his return from abroad. 

That day, James called me to attend on a customer, who had questions on some specific plants I had more knowledge on than he did. He introduced the customer as an old acquaintance of his – a professor working at the Contemporary Oral Heritage department at the local university.

After helping her with her questions, we ended up talking a little bit more about her work, and I ended up, crucially, mentioning that I happened to know someone in their department or one of the adjoining departments, who studied Greek mythology as a visiting fellow.

_Except_ that Prof Fairfax had _no idea_ who I was talking about. Not only did she have no knowledge of Aidon based on his description, his specialty, or his research grant he claimed to have, she went further in claiming that the university had currently no specialized Ancient Studies programme at all and all Ancient Greek and Roman subjects were given as subject parts under degree programmes for History.

_That_ was a blow I had not expected to receive. Him _leaving_ had been an eventual possibility, him…. _lying_? _deceiving?_ me was something I had _not_ expected at all.

It went completely against _every single sign_ and feeling I got off of him. His disposition, his very extensive knowledge on Greek mythology and its modern developments – _everything_ had seemed true. His looks, his seemingly utter devotion to spending time with me, _to me_ had not painted me a guy, who’d… lie.

Feeling dazed and utterly confused, I requested half a day off from James – knowing fully well that I had worked so many days of overtime, that I could have asked for two weeks off and received it; especially as James saw how white I had turned based on Prof Fairfax’s continued denials of having _any_ knowledge of anybody even remotely resembling Aidon.

I drove home that day, having no memory of how I actually managed to get home at all, rushed through the door, and felt like I wanted to scream, cry, and destroy something, all at once. Had this been some kind of an elaborate ploy? Had someone played a very cruel trick on me? Who? Why?

I wanted to throw up at that thought.

Was someone after my money? I didn’t have a lot, but when had that stopped people before?

But Aidon was clearly well off – he had spoken of his brothers and their expensive lifestyles, and wasn’t he the one who was always dressed to nines? _Why would he want my money?_ Unless the _well-off_ part was part of the deception as well.

Was that the reason his apartment had looked so empty and devoid of actual life being lived there? Because he hadn’t actually lived there.

I felt like pieces of the puzzle started to click together. Everything illogical, however small or potentially wrong – I pieced it together.

His apartment had clearly been a loaner, an empty shell, where he hadn’t actually resided. His dogs, that he _supposedly_ loved, but hadn’t showed me pictures of? Probably lies as well. His wealthy family? Probably nonexistent. His _‘I don’t date and I don’t have friends’_ – lies. All lies. Liiiiies.

Who the **hell** was he? Who was the guy I had drenched in coffee, kissed like mad, and had considered sleeping with?

A con artist? A serial killer? A private investigator?

As those thoughts and questions swirled in my head, I opened up my laptop, and started doing an online search on his name – if he had a PhD, he had to have some academic breadcrumbs left of his career; something, _anything_ ; a journal article, a thesis, a regular article. People leave traces of themselves behind – a registered address, a social media post, an old account at a public forum they were stupid enough to sign up on with their own name. There had to be something. I was _hoping_ there would be something – _anything_ to prove that he existed at all, even better if it proved that he was who he claimed he was.

My heart and hands trembled like mad when I was typing in various forms of his name, his potential schooling, his research. Not a single happy _thud-thud-thud_ in place – only a heavy _bump, bump, bump_. It felt like someone had cut off my air supply and sent me to the depths of the Mariana Trench.

***

My hopes that Aidon _hadn’t_ been some kind of an elaborate ploy came to no avail.

I wasn’t able to prove that he was who he claimed he was. His name came up with no recognizable results. Not only did I get **no** full hits on his full name – only partial results on people, who had seemingly similar names or parts of his names; I wasn’t able to find anything that would confirm his identity. It was as if he didn’t exist at all.

It felt like I had been stabbed in the gut.

My heart was breaking.

I had trusted and I had failed.

Tears sprung in my eyes, my throat constricted, my heart ached.

I felt dirty – almost like I had been used and abused and cast aside.

I quaked. It felt like I had an earthquake inside me, willing to burst out.

And then I felt enraged. How dare he come and ruin my life like that? How dare anyone think that something like that was okay? I raged for a while, punching my pillows and screaming into them, until I had no rage left and finally, tears started to fall, the last vestiges of my control snapping.

Then – I cried. 

I cried like I hadn’t cried in years. I cried over this man that I thought I had started to love, that I had opened my heart to, and who I had thought had loved me too. We hadn’t said it yet, not in words, but by all accounts, I thought it had been love.

I cried over the loss of this illusion that I had been loved and that there had been someone I had been able to support on. I cried for the loss of fantasy and in the stark light of reality, felt the cold bars of _real life_ fall around me, as I forced myself to accept the reality that it had all been a lie.

Aidon had been a lie. Aidon _whoever he was_ had been an imposter.

I had been lied to. Someone had played the cruelest trick of my life and I had responded to it like a fiddle in the hand of player. I had thought I had been a tough bitch, ready to face anything and anybody, but it only took a handsome man, with beautiful eyes, and a voice I thought I had recognized, to bring me down to my knees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The music I listened to while writing this particular chapter:
> 
> 'Wicked Game' by Chris Isaak - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aid2vMbCNP8
> 
> 'Rolling in the Deep' by Adele - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYEDA3JcQqw


	13. Hell hath no fury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella gets a shock of a lifetime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This text has not been beta-read and English is my second language. 
> 
> The text contains references to and characters from Lore Olympus (creator Rachel Smythe), original Greek mythology, and some other works that don't belong to me. I claim no ownership of these works.

They all knew that something had happened.

James had asked me, repeatedly, if everything was alright and I kept telling him that I was okay, although my heart was broken and I felt like I had a hole in my chest where my heart was supposed to be.

I had discovered Aidon’s deception four days before, and had spent the last three days at home, faking being sick and moping around at home, revolving between extreme anger and extreme sadness, simply unable to go back to work before.

But I had returned now.

I had a plan. I knew what I was going to do.

_Be the bitch you always wanted to be_ , I told myself.

_We’re under a siege_ , my heart and brain said together, for once united in their opinion.

Aidon had texted me early morning, saying how much he had missed me and proposed to meet at the City Park later that afternoon. I had felt disgusted at first, fighting the urge to just block his number and throw away the phone altogether, but I opted to give a positive answer to his proposal to meet and planned on telling him **exactly** what I thought of him then.

_You just wait and see, you fucker – you haven’t seen even the worst of me yet_ , I promised him in my head.

I had felt elated at first, at the prospect of revealing to him how I had found him out, how I knew he was a phoney, a liar, a cheat, but as time was running out, I kept getting increasingly nervous over the prospect of what I had decided to do.

A tiny part of me wanted this all to be some sort of a mix-up, a misunderstanding, a case of mixed identities. I had wanted Prof Fairfax to be wrong. But as I had searched her name, her reputation had come up as flawless, at least in academia. I could have entertained that perhaps it was a case of female jealousy, but Prof Fairfax was nearing 70 and Aidon was, at maximum, 35 – age gaps were not unheard of, but Prof Fairfax had come up as being happily married and being a grandma; I doubted she was after Aidon.

_I don’t want to do it_ , my heart claimed sadly. _I want him to hug me, and love me, and want me_.

Me too, heart. Me too.

_No_ , I had thought bitterly then, _the simple answer is the true answer – he lied to me and I fell for it, hook, line and sinker._

***

As the clock neared our meeting time, I felt physically sick, nearly throwing up. I _looked_ sick, so much so, that James suggested me to take the rest of the week off as well, with full-pay. I would have hugged him then and there, but he would have known immediately that something was very very wrong then, and I held myself back.

_Just one more hour and you will be done_ , I told myself. _Bitch-mode activated. Hell hath no fury like a scorned woman._

_You’re going to wish someone else had covered you in coffee, Mr Eyes with Stars_ , I told myself.

I had been repeating those sentences like a promotional sales assistant doing sales pep talk, over and over again, but that didn’t make _any_ of it any easier.

***

I got to the City Park before him, as usual. I texted him the location, a bit hidden from the public view, but still accessible and still public enough that I wouldn’t feel endangered should he flip out over me having discovered his secret.

My heart kept beating a heavy sluggish rhythm of _thump-thump-thump_ , so different from that usual and happy-sounding _thud-thud-thud_ I normally experienced around Aidon.

I focused on my breathing – in and out, in and out. I was feeling sick. My hands were clammy, my cheeks felt heated.

_Focus on the task_ , I told myself. _Get your words out – you don’t even need to listen to his explanations if you don’t want to_ , my heart told me.

My brain told me to _listen carefully – he might have had a good reason for acting the way he acted_.

Both my brain and heart went from 0 to 100 when it came to Aidon. Both wanted him to suffer, then neither wanted it. Brain offered solutions, heart wanted consolidation.

But: for once, my heart wanted to rule, to be the calm and collected body part, and my head wanted to be less rational, more emotional, still clinging to him.

_Gods, I had wanted to give myself to him_ , I thought. _He could have wanted to fuck me six ways from Sunday and I would have eventually agreed, because he was him_.

I closed my eyes and tried to regulate my breathing – in and out, out and in.

_Be brave. It’s not the end of the world. You made yourself be weak – that’s human. He’s the one at fault, not you._

It was really surreal to be sitting in that park, with the sounds of nature surrounding me, all while my heart raged and broke simultaneously.

I heard him coming before I _saw_ him coming – mainly because I had kept my eyes closed, daring not to look at his face. He came and sat next to me on the bench and grabbed my hands, whispering: “Hey Sweetness, I missed you”, and kissed me fully, but quickly, on my mouth.

_Show him that he decided to fuck with the wrong person. I’ve seen the depths of hell from the inside – mister, you’ve did nothing to me that I hadn’t seen in the foster system before._

It was only then that I opened up my eyes and he got a very good look at my face, and I immediately saw his eyes going from very excited to very concerned.

“Ella, what happened? Don’t even try to tell me nothing did, I can see it from your face – you look like you’ve been ill, _very_ ill. Were you sick? Should you even be out here right now if you were sick? Love, why didn’t you tell me – I could have postponed the meeting, or come to your place”, he implored in an urgent voice.

_Yeah, I guess you would have **loved** to come to my place, wouldn’t you, you fucker_.

“… or something. Ells, you’re scaring me, what’s going on?” he finished, concern evident in his eyes. I also saw something I thought had been love, before, but how could it have been love, if I _knew_ that it wasn’t possible for someone to lie like that and still love me?

_You…. you… you…_ was all that was going on in my head.

I fought to contain my anger and rage, but it must have shown, because his face got even more concerned and he grabbed my face between his hands – _his hands, which I had been dreaming about and loved and which I had felt caress me all these years_ – tilted my head to look towards him and told me, in an almost authoritative tone: “Ella, tell me now, what the hell happened in those two weeks that I was away?”

***

I was so angry, I almost whisper-talked to him.

“Tell me, _Aidon_ , I was thinking of visiting your department one day, do you think I could come and see it someday soon?” I asked him, trying to make my enraged voice sweet and mellow, but ended up doing an impersonation of someone with a very bad cold, my voice hoarse and throaty.

“Umm... I’d have to pre-arrange it and it might take a while, to get the necessary okay’s, you know – everybody’s traveling right now to conferences and conventions as it’s summer, but I’m sure you can come in a couple of weeks’ time”, he said. I had never noticed him being evasive about the university before, but it was evident now that if it were up to him, I _wouldn’t_ be visiting that faculty anytime soon.

“Did you enjoy your visit back _home, Aidon_?” I asked further, trying to very succinctly stress the words ‘home’ and ‘Aidon’ to imply how much I thought these sounded like ‘lies’ and ‘liar’.

I _felt_ hollow.

With every word, the pressing on my heart got worse and worse and I wanted to screech and cry and curse.

Blood pumped in my veins and in my ears, until I heard the drums of my heart beat as loud as the sound of a thousand horses galloping by.

I felt like I was breaking apart.

He clearly noticed that something was very off, but didn’t comment on it, as he launched into a short story on how he and his brothers had met up, and how he had had to commandeer his brothers back to one of their homes, as both had had too much to drink and were completely out of it. “I’m telling you Sweets, it’s like they’re in their early 20s – drinking, partying, even going after women – and they’re both married!” as he ended the sentence with an obvious expression of outrage.

He tried to grab my hand and I let him, but with every passing minute, I felt more and more like I was going to burst and explode if I didn’t allow myself to extract myself from him, so I shifted my position to face him directly and went for it, guns blazing.

“Aidon, please tell me something”, as I kept an iron grip on my barely there calm demeanor, “something about your university”, I added.

“Yes, love?” he replied back.

“How come a professor at the Contemporary Oral Heritage department of _your_ university has never heard of a person with your name, doesn’t recognize the research you do, nor seemingly remembers anybody that fits with your physical description?” I stuttered the words out of myself.

There – I had done it. Whatever came next, I had taken the first step towards getting myself out of this mess. 

“Ells, I’m sure you misheard him, but I can assure you”, he started to counterargue, but I cut him off, hissing, “Prof Fairfax is a woman, not a man!”

Those amazing eyes that I had wanted to drown in – they first widened, then something broke in them.

I knew from the look on his face that he realized that his subterfuge, his game, was over and done. His face became ashen, his eyes pained, his lips thinned and whitened.

“Ells, I have an explanation for all of it”, he started to say, but I cut him off once more.

“Don’t you _DARE_ to come and tell me that there’s an explanation – there is no justification for what you have done!” I almost screeched at him. “And don’t call me Ells – you have no right to call me anything anymore, not even Ms Michaels, I am a nobody for you from now on, do you hear me?!”

It took every ounce of my physical strength to keep myself sitting upright and not bowl over in agony.

With all my hurt and pent up feelings resurfacing, I started tearing up and asked him, with anguish: “Why? Why did you do it? I… I… I thought you liked me, _really_ really liked me, I thought I did the same”, I said with a small sniffle as first tears almost fell down. “Was this a joke to you? Is there a camera hidden somewhere? Am I part of some kind of an elaborate con, where you needed to convince some poor unsuspecting girl with no family around in your story and… then what?” I asked.

I was on a roll, I was gunning at him full-speed.

“All your concerns, your worries, your stories about your research – all lies, big, fat, filthy LIES, and for WHAT?!” I yelled at him.

“You were going to leave anyway, so why not just leave now? Why did you even come back?” I asked.

I turned my face away from him.

Have you ever seen those videos, where they film the launch of a new ship, and as it slides towards the water, its fall into the water creates a tidal wave?

My heart felt like that tidal wave – being buried. My heart felt like that ship – falling. My heart was breaking as I spoke.

_You can do it, Ella, he’s just a guy. Amazingly good looking, with the voice that haunts your dreams, but still just a guy_.

His face betrayed an emotion that clearly implied he wanted to argue back, and he started to say: “Ella, I’m not going anywhere and you have it all wrong, I...”

But I was a runaway train going full-speed and I couldn’t have been stopped.

Whipping my face back towards him, tears in my eyes, I said: “I wanted to sleep with you, did you know that? I really did. You were the first guy who had ever – EVER – made me feel like…. the first guy who I thought deserved a piece of me I’d never be able to give someone else, and all this – only to discover you’re a fucking phoney!”

He was on the verge of crying as well, I saw the evidence in his eyes.

He put his hands on my arms, and although I tried to juggle myself out them, he turned me, slightly, and spoke to me in earnest – words, which I didn’t want to hear; lies I didn’t want taking root in my head.

“Ella, listen to me. I have a **very** good explanation for all of this, if you only - LET ME EXPLAIN”, his voice raised slightly in volume when I tried to wriggle away. He continued: “I know what it looks like – it looks bad and I look like the conman I know you think I am, but it is not that cut and dry black and white. I need you to keep an open mind about this, about what I’m going to tell you. I know I cannot ask you to believe when I say that the answer to the question of ‘have I ever lied to you?’ is almost always a ‘no’ when it comes to you, but as you clearly know now that some parts of my story were fake, you wouldn’t believe me – not now at least. But most parts of my story are completely true”, he added, with a desperate pleading glint in his eyes.

**“** I am Greek, I am from Europe, and I really do have a family full of Greek mythology experts. I really have two brothers, and they’re both honestly involved in subject areas I mentioned. I truly have intimate knowledge in history, oral folklore and Greek mythology – I may not have the degrees I mentioned to show for it, but if it were possible for me to obtain the degrees in those subjects, I would ace them easily”, he continued, in a hurried space, probably afraid that I wouldn’t allow him to continue otherwise.

“What – more of your lies now?” I asked him with a biting and a vicious tone. But my face crumpled and three, no, four extra-large fat tears rolled down on my cheek.

“I deserve every bit of your anger, but you must understand – I needed you to get to know me before everything would blow to smithereens; I wanted you to know the man, the true man inside, and I wanted you to learn to love me for me”, he said, with such honesty and desperation in his voice that I wanted to weep, because he sounded _so_ honest and _so_ true, and I found it _almost_ possible for me to believe him.

“Sweetness, I love you. I know you don’t believe me right now, but I have loved you from the first day I met you and this has been far longer than you can ever imagine, and I am so sorry I have had to lie to you, but you must allow me to explain and you must listen to me, I –––”, he continued on, pleading; words coming out of his mouth, which just a month ago would have probably made my heart skip three spaces, but now felt like I had been forced to swallow a mouthful of ash.

“I don’t want your lies anymore – Aidon or whoever you are. I want you to go back to where you came from and to leave me, my life, the hell alone. Hell will freeze over before I will believe any word you say to me ever again”, I told him, brokenly.

“Sweets, I’m asking a lot from you, I know that as well, but you won’t lose anything if you give me time to explain things. You can still leave after I’ve explained things to you”, he uttered, eyes teary and face ashen.

_Would it hurt to listen to him? Can there be an explanation to all of this?_

“Give me one VERY good reason why I shouldn’t walk out of here, march to the first police station and make a report with your name heavily written all over it?” I asked him, looking him straight into his eyes, _daring_ him to say anything. 

_Fucker_ , I added in my brain.

As I was waiting for this clearly nonexistent reason to surface from his mouth, I saw his face set – something having aligned in him, and almost impossible to see straightening of spine and spirit happened right before my eyes, before it all crumbled into dust.

And of all the reasons in the world, I would have never expected the following words to be uttered, and their impact to be such that it would change – or rather, correct – my whole life’s path.

„Because you’re my wife!“ he moaned out and covered his face with his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel almost giddy about sharing this chapter - I've had it ready for a while and while I understand the concept may seem a bit like a stretch, I'm afraid it will look and feel weird for a while now. I will try to reroute it back to LO soon. I will have more explanations to share in the next chapters' notes as it will be a rocky ride for a while. 
> 
> Some music I listened to while writing this chapter:
> 
> 'You Give Love a Bad Name' by Bon Jovi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrZHPOeOxQQ
> 
> 'Listen to Your Heart' by Roxette - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCC_b5WHLX0
> 
> 'To the Moon and Back' by Savage Garden - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCm6gRHINqA


	14. Anger for one, despair for the other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mystery starts to unfold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The text has not been beta-read, English is my second-language.
> 
> This text contains characters, references to, and situations described in Lore Olympus (creator Rachel Smythe), the original Greek myths, and some others. I claim no ownership of these items in my stories.

Life is curious. We all believe that we take paths that we choose ourselves – fate and destiny are not factored in, unless it’s viewed through a religious prism.

I had never believed in fate, for fate surely could not have given me the start it had. No, my life was not fated and I had decided to always choose my own path.

But as I sat there, on that park bench, having heard the _most_ outrageous words coming out of Aidon’s mouth, I had thought, for a moment, if fate was real and it was playing a cruel mistress with me.

***

“EXCUSE ME?!“ I yelled as I aimed to leap up from the bench, but was unable to because a second later, Aidon’s hands were holding on to my elbows and forcing me to sit and face him.

“Have you gone completely MAD?! Even more mad? Is this some kind of a revolving SICK JOKE?“ I yelled at him some more. Anger, disbelief, now also fear, were coursing through my veins.

He was _clearly_ insane. There could have been no other explanation. Insane people could be dangerous. I had always admired, ogled even, Aidon’s looks, his large frame in comparison to mine. But he was a large man. And if he was insane….

 _Ella, you have officially entered the category of women, who find only sickos and psychopaths as partners_ , I thought to myself. _Is it too late to sexually explore my options and just… forego men at all?_

I aimed to stand up and get as far away from him as possible, placing as much distance between us as I could. Still – he held to me, my arms held between his vice-like grip, firm, but not painful.

His eyes bore into me, but there was nothing manic or crazy about them. If at all, he looked at me like he was simultaneously relieved and terrified.

“I KNOW how this sounds like, I truly do. I’m not mad, I’m not sick, I’m not your secret stalker, and I’m not a serial killer“, he said, somehow knowing exactly what thoughts were running through my head.

“This sounds crazy, I know, but please – PLEASE, let me finish – just let me explain it to you“, he implored further, frantic eyes boring into me. “You can always leave later, but grant me the ten minutes, I beg you”.

“If you think I’m going to sit here and let you spout some crazy-talk, you have another thing coming. Unhand me and let me go, or I’ll scream so loud, you won’t be able to hear ever again!“

I couldn’t believe this was the guy I had been seeing for months, my brain literally ground to halt and refused to process what was happening.

I wanted to ask him _why_ – why, why, why; plead him to say it was a mix-up, desperate for things to return as they were.

Realising that I was not going to let him continue and explain things to me, he must have made a split-second decision, as he hauled me against him, gripped me firmly, but not painfully, and spoke quietly into my ear.

“I will forever ask your forgiveness from this day forward if you allow me to explain. I’d never hurt you, you’re the most important thing in my life. You’re my moon and stars, for I had none before you. I...“

 _This is how I die_ , I suddenly thought, my brain clearly going into overdrive. _This is how I’m going to die. They’ll find my body – if they’ll ever find it – at some swamp creek and they’ll never know what happened to me. I’m dead, I’m a dead woman walking._

I knew this was a crazy-me talking – the one that had watched a true crime show too many, but honestly, with everything I had thought had been true ending up as lies and deception, I was down to believing _anything_ these days.

I sniffled.

He must have sensed that I was going into a shock or state of numbness, because the next moment, I heard his very concerned – sounding genuinely concerned – voice, saying: “Sweetheart, don’t cry! Don’t cry! I promise it’s nothing bad, I just want the chance to explain and if you leave now, you won’t know why and I cannot let this farce continue without you knowing why and ...“

Then his voice quivered, but he didn’t let me go. He drew a ragged breath and very gently spoke into my ear.

“This is the worst way I could have ever handled this. This just takes the cake. You weren’t supposed to find out right now. I was going to take time. Take time and really get close and explain things to you. Make you love ME, like I love you, and explain. Make you see and experience things to back up my words, so it all wouldn’t come off so crazy. I’ve waited for this so long and you were starting to l-like me and now you hate me. I’m sorry, love, I’m so sorry!“

Strangely, I felt his arms lax a bit. If I’d wanted, I could have probably gotten away. I could have hit him, aimed at his stomach or legs, and run. My gut instinct wasn’t yelling at me to run from him, but I felt adrenaline course through my veins and I could have done it.

_Why aren’t you moving, Ella? Ella! Move! Your legs, your arms! MOVE!_

His next words, however, stopped my train of thought. As he shuddered, I felt a raggedy breath being taken, and I swear I could feel a sob in his body, as he half-hugged, half-placed his head on my shoulders, and what must have been a voice coming from a man almost in tears, he said:

“I just want my wife back. That’s all I’ve wanted, all this time. You have no idea what I’ve been through. I want the chance to explain. I would never hurt you. How could I – you’re the light of my life, always have been. There’s nobody else, and there’s nothing else I wouldn’t do for you. Just... let me explain. Give me a chance. Please – just give me a chance and I’ll let you go, as long as you stay and let me explain. Please.“

 _This is the point where they lure you into false sense of security and the protagonist gets killed_ , I thought. _I should run_. Yet, strangely, as he relaxed his arms around me and turned me around to face him, I didn’t use my chance. My brain continued to scream at me, I kept hearing my own words – _you’re an idiot, run now, now’s your chance_ – but I stayed put and got a decent look into his face, which was now tear-streaked and utterly, brokenly, sad.

I had been waiting for this moment all this time, but as I had been given it, I had stayed rooted on my spot. Was I an idiot? I must have been, right? Just a minute ago I would have given anything for the chance to run away, but as I heard his utterly breaking sob of _missing his wife_ , I….

Truth is – I have no idea why I just didn’t run.

I just didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the story takes a dive off from the Lore Olympus path. I will try to divert it back, but for a while from now, it will be very different.
> 
> I tried to portray their conversation as such where one person tells the other something completely unbelievable, to such a degree that you'd think the other has gone insane - I hope I succeeded in trying to portray Ella's anger and also fear in listening to Aidon's explanations.
> 
> It's also a relatively short chapter, because the following ones will be very long.


	15. The truth will out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella finds out the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The text has not been beta-read, English is my second-language.
> 
> This text contains characters, references to, and situations described in Lore Olympus (creator Rachel Smythe), the original Greek myths, and some others. I claim no ownership of these items in my stories.

Rooted on the spot, I felt split into half. Half of me wanted to flee – to tell him to _fuck off_ and go home, to forget all of this, to forget the last few months. The other half was desperately clinging onto this idea that all of this had a sensible reason, because it seemed impossible that everything had _gone to shit_ in just one week.

_He_ had taken it as a sign that I had decided to allow him to try and explain it all.

“Thank you. I’ll explain everything to you now that you’ve given me a chance. This is a very long story, and it would have been better done somewhere else and much later, but this is all such a mess and this is it, I guess“, he said, wiping his face.

He then groaned and hunched over, placing is palms onto his face and supporting himself on his knees. Then he faced upwards again and wiped his eyes with his palms once more and turned towards me, his face set with determination.

“First – you should know that I’m indeed not who you think I am. You were right – I’m not a research fellow, like you guessed. It was all made up, served to give me a purpose to be here. I know more of Greek mythology than any living scholar, but I’m not even in the academia. I’m comfortably rich enough that I don’t need the money, not that there’s any in academia“, he scoffed, „and I only presented university story for one reason and that reason was you. I needed to be near you after we met and the university story offered the chance. I’m so sorry, Ells, for lying to you. I’ll make sure to make it up for you for the rest of eternity.“

He looked into my face and my eyes so earnestly when he said that. I almost wanted to believe he wasn’t a crazy sicko intending to hurt me.

“I came here because of YOU. That’s the single reason I am here. I don’t give a toss about anything else.“

_Great, he actually has chosen to be obsessed with me_ , I thought. _Just great. Amazing, even_.

I felt drained.

But what came next would spin my head and thoughts so fast that it made me think I had vertigo. I would have never expected the following words to come out of his mouth, but they did. And when they did, they floored me, completely.

“I **know** you recognized my voice the first time we met”, and while he said that, he looked at me; really looked at me.

He continued: “I know you did, because I could feel it the moment I spoke. I shocked you. It wasn’t just a resemblance you felt, was it? You **knew** my voice and even though you don’t want to admit it to me at this moment in time, you had known my voice for years. Five, right? I knew you knew me as I knew you. You cannot lie to me, Ella – I know you better than you think. The fact that you recognised –– “, he stopped speaking. 

Starry eyes looked at mine – determined, swirling, scared, but resolved.

How _on Earth_ had he known?

It was true, of course. I _had_ recognised his voice and his hands the first time we met. That voice had haunted my dreams close to five years, as he had correctly…. _guessed?_ , and I had been taken very much aback when I heard him speak after I had spilled his coffee all over his clothes.

My mind reeled. Every interaction played in my mind, searching for him; searching for his presence from my past. _How_ had he known? Had it been my body language? Was he an expert in reading it and he had just… deducted? But the timeline – the correctly guessed number of years?

I stayed still and silent, not willing to risk and confirm nor deny his allegations. Something was now pinching my heart – something lurked, kept me at bay, wary.

He looked away, slightly pained, and then looked back at me, with more determination in his eyes as he spoke again.

“Tell me – what do you know about the myth of Hades and Persephone?“

I must have looked into his face as if he was crazy for wanting to speak about ancient Greek myths then and there, and started to argue back, my voice shaking, suddenly feeling cold and drained of everything. “You said you’d explain. I could’ve left. I still want to. Asking me to tell you stories is not explaining it and I’m leaving if you don’t.”

He reiterated: “It’s important you tell me first, it’s part of my explanation, and I need to know what you know, so I can tell you what I need to tell you.”

_What is this? Why am I staying? Leave him, go!_

But I didn’t leave before and as curiosity killed the cat, I wanted to _know_ how he had known. I was a stupid moo-moo and I didn’t go. _Where’s your bitch-attitude now, Ella, huh?_ I asked myself.

Irritated now, I quickly tried to tell him what I knew and could remember from high school.

“The most common understanding of the myth is that Hades, God of the Underworld, abducted Persephone, the Goddess of Spring, with the intent to marry her. She was taken to the Underworld and kept there, whilst her mother, Goddess Demeter, started searching for her above ground. Her anguish was so great that she kept the crops from growing and people started to die off from starvation. Hades was forced to relinquish Persephone from the Underworld, but she had, by that time, consumed six pomegranate seeds, which meant that she was forever bound to the Underworld and to its ruler, as she had consumed the food from there. She was returned to her mother, but henceforth had to spend six months out of a year in the Underworld every year. The myth is used to explain how seasons, specifically, how colder and cropless winter months came to exist.”

He had been looking into my eyes when I spoke, but I realised he didn’t like my answer, and he looked away, irritated, his lips pinched. As I finished, he looked into my face and said: “Very well“.

Growing annoyed at his reaction and at this situation now, I asked again: “What has this got to do with anything? WHY is this even important right now? Do you have _any_ idea how angry I am at whatever this”, I waved my hands around us, “is?“

“It’s important for you to gain the understanding of my actions!“ he said, exasperated, his eyes flashing.

I shrunk back from his outburst and he immediately realised he shouldn’t have raised his voice at me. He retreated slightly and quickly said: “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound so angry. My emotions are getting the better of me - I'm... emotional about all of this coming out this way, so badly. I apologize. I told you I’d explain and the myth is part of the explanation.”

He continued: “You’re right that the myth is being used to explain the appearance of seasons. You’re also right in claiming that for a long time, the myth has been presented as a story of forceful abduction of the Spring of Goddess and the wrath of her mother Demeter.“

He sighed and looked away, as he continued speaking: “Myths are, of course, not singular in nature. There are often multiple versions in existence and our understanding of how things used to be, when those myths emerged, and how things have been in the times since, have all changed how we understand those myths now.“

Inside, I was breaking – becoming this hull of a person, and he wanted to discuss _semantics_?

“You want to talk about the true meaning of words? Right now? When you’ve lied to me for months, making me feel and think you were someone you were not? Hypocrite, much?” I asked him. I was _so_ over this. Over him trying to tell me nonsensical things when I had been breaking in half over him being someone he was not. Over everything. I wanted to eat my weight in ice cream and rage-bake a dozen cookies and I wanted to cry, cry, cry.

“You’re missing the point, Ells! I’m not claiming the things you are trying to pin on me. I’m simply saying that our understanding of myths has evolved over time and as more and more time has passed between the emergence of the myth and modernity, we have come to understand things differently”, he added, seemingly trying to control his temper.

Suddenly he sounded very much like the stuffy academic he didn’t proclaim to be. “You said that it’s about seasons and the abduction of Persephone. When framed like that, it implies that it was all negative for Persephone, that she was the eternal victim in this“, he murmured.

“What you didn’t say, however, is that longer versions of the myth also present the relationship between Hades and Persephone as one of the most stable relationships in existence in the Greek pantheon. As difficult as the beginning of their relationship was, they – supposedly – had a loving and a passionate relationship. Certainly better than some of the other Greek Gods and Goddesses of the pantheon. Therefore, some believe that the myth is one of _the_ original love stories and one of the roots of modern romantic genre. Walk into any bookstore and you’ll find rows and rows of books, where the main action is about some grumpy asshole, who seduces a virginal heroine, they fight and make up repeatedly, and suddenly they live happily ever after“, he added.

His eyes were pained when he looked at me and continued: “What the myth doesn’t say and really, nobody knows this part except me and some few select individuals, is that the God of the Underworld lost his wife and their eternal love and succumbed to ruling alone for millennias“, he sustained quietly, while looking at his hands.

_He must be joking, right?_ my brain now piped up. _He and a couple of select individuals know? What is he – Dan Brown’s character in a novel?_ I heard my brain, and myself, snort.

His eyes betrayed that he, too, was holding something on a short leash.

I almost rolled my eyes, when I asked him: “I’d ask you to forgive me for being rude, but as I’m still not at all convinced that you’re not a sicko in the head, I’m left to ask, once again: what does ANY of this has got to do with me? Or how you have behaved?” I asked him.

“You’re not listening or reading between the lines, are you?“ he suddenly grabbing one of my hands once again.

“Let. me. go“, I said, through clenched teeth. “You promised you’d explain and you’ve done none of that. I’ve given you time and chance to explain like you asked. You have not. Now I want to leave. You hurt me _bad_ , Aidon, and you have not given me a single reasonable explanation as to why. I’m going to leave now”, I told him, trying to get out of his hold.

Suddenly, he moved – with one arm, he continued to hold onto my own, but with the other, he grabbed my jaw, firmly, but not harshly, and forced me to look into his eyes. His eyes, which were dark blue swirling pools of hope, irritation, sadness, and fear – all mixed together – stared into me, as he spoke the words, which I surely must have imagined.

“I know that Hades lost his beloved wife, because I was there. I was there for his anguish and his suffering throughout all the lifetimes that he had to spend alone. I told you that you ARE my wife. Knowing what I told you about the myth, do you understand, REALLY understand, who you are? Who I am?“

Frantic eyes were looking at me, the same fear and hope still swirling in the blue depths that I had seen just moments before.

“You’ve got another thing coming, if you think that I’m going to believe in some fantasy of ––––„

“It’s not a fantasy, Ells, it’s real!“ he told me a bit louder, still holding to my face. “I want you to say it, out loud, to my face, what you’ve understood.”

“You’re claiming that.... that.... You – you – have intimate knowledge of Greek myths because you were there and you have seen Hades and Persephone, personally, is that it? That’s what you claim, isn’t it?“ I answered back to him, with a voice that must have betrayed a hint of incredulity, as well as sarcasm.

_Oh, lord, I've really chosen well with this one, haven't I?_

“I mean, _come on_ , I’m not going to believe that! You are deluded. I’m sorry, but you are. You are completely and entirely bonkers if you think that I am _ever_ going to believe that and believe you and your crazy theory“, as I almost nervous-laughed into his face, ripping myself away from his hands.

As I pulled my other arm away as well and made a grab for my backpack and my phone, I decided to go to the jugular. “Look, this has gone long enough. I am sorry that you somehow have deluded yourself into believing whatever crazy theory you have. Aidon, or whatever your real name is – I am sorry that your wife must have clearly left you and you have completely gone over the rails with grief over the dissolution of your marriage. I will never know why. Do I resemble her to you? Is that the reason I became your target? Although, if you were like this with your wife, I’m not surprised she left you. Now, I’m going to grab my things and I’m leaving“, I said, as I turned to stand up and leave him behind. He no longer held my arms and he seemed to be completely devoid of any emotion or movement.

I no longer cared how he had known about my dreams. _This_ was too much. All of it. I was _done_. D-O-N-E.

I grabbed my things and stood up, with the intent to leave. After.... _this_ , I needed more than an ice cream – I needed a stiff drink, despite almost never drinking, a bath, and a pepper spray and self-defence classes. All in that order. And I was going to shun men – all men, but especially beautiful men.

_Amen, girl._

As I took my first steps to leave Aidon behind – the guy I had surely began to love just a few weeks ago, even though I had never told him so and had not allowed myself to think of it as such – he suddenly came after me, and spun me to face him. Had this been a romantic movie, he would have surely once again declared his love for me now. Had this been a romance movie, there would have been an explanation. Something, _anything_ , to make it less… _this_.

It felt like a badly-acted, third-rate drama that I no longer wanted to be a part of.

Eyes the colour of stormy seas, pained, but resolved, looked into mine as he said the words that would cement the changed course of my life and upend everything as I knew it.

“You _really_ didn’t get it, did you? I was telling you all of this, because you **are** my wife. My destined soulmate. My Queen. My eternal lover. You belong with me, as I belong with you.”

As he was proclaiming all of this, I suddenly realized that my throat had gone dry and impossible, hilariously ridiculous thoughts entered my head.

_He said that Hades spent lifetimes alone, after his queen was no more. Hades, the ruler of the Underworld, a God amongst the Greek pantheon. And he…_

“You’re… you’re trying to claim that you – YOU – are Hades?! And that I’m… that I’m somehow… Persephone, in this idea of yours?!”

I laughed. I started laughing so bad, I had tears in my eyes. I must have been experiencing a shock, since there could not have been another explanation. With Prof Fairfax’s revelations and now this, I was a future prime candidate for some very expensive therapists, it seemed. 

He looked taken aback.

“You don’t believe me?” he asked almost angrily.

“ _Aidon whatever you are_ , if I’d believe you, I’d have to ask myself to be kept at the psychiatric hospital and I know, for a fact, that I don’t suffer from delusions. But you clearly do, so...”, as I started to break away once again.

“I know that you’ve dreamed about us. And I don’t mean, us – now, here, in modernity – you’ve dreamed about us back there, all those lifetimes ago”, he said, brokenly, quietly. I could hardly hear the words, but I felt like time slowed down and everything else around us became muddled, so only his words were decipherable to me.

Fearing I’d run away, he rushed to speak: “The first summer of separation, I could hardly keep myself away from you, so I snuck above, many times, waiting to bear your mother’s wrath, but doing it willingly to get a glimpse of my wife – my WIFE, who I couldn’t believe had wanted ME out of everything and everybody – amongst the fields and wildflowers that made you so happy. It was where I had seen you prior to me taking you, and it was where I came to possibly find you. But that one time, you weren’t there and I had to sneak behind your window to peer into your room. I don’t know how, but you knew – somehow, you just knew – that I was there and we snuck you out to the meadow and that night is one of my most cherished memories I have of us together. We talked and we made love and I whispered words, meant only for you. You gave me a promise to never leave me and I promised the same."

I had only taken three steps away, but had stopped when he started to recant that particular story. I wholeheartedly believed that his story on being a Greek god was an elaborate delusion, the ravings of a madman, the story of a crook.

But….

Having now uttered those words, those impossible to know words, doubt seeped into my pores.

***

I _had_ seen this particular scene in my dreams. Many times, in fact. Years before I had even met him. Only then, before I covered him in coffee and heard his voice, he didn’t have a face, he never said his name, he never proclaimed himself as Hades or Aidon, and me as Persephone.

But I knew how his hands felt on my body and how it had felt to be held by him. I knew the passions we had shared and the sound of his voice as we came to unite our bodies on that meadow under the stars. It was only later – later, when I had met him – that I had assigned his face to that voice, but he couldn’t have known that, as I had never shared my dreams with him either and we had obviously never been intimate.

But I could confirm that his voice and his hands sounded and felt exactly like they did in my dreams.

He continued, sounding utterly heartbroken: “You told me you loved me and would love me for all eternity, for all lifetimes, and to all ends. You said that the skies above, lit with stars, reminded you my eyes. You kissed my skin and whispered quiet words of adoration and love, as I worshipped your body with mine, over and over again, throughout the night. And as the sun was about to rise and we were walking back to your mother’s house, you told me –––”, he hitched, clearly emotional.

Like a record player, I recited: “I told you that even if the world ended in darkness and ruin, I’d find your soul and we’d be together forever”, in the quietest voices imaginable, with eyes on his face, as the memory swept across my mind. I recalled all the words I had heard in my dreams, the caresses administered, and how I had begged him to fuck me into oblivion under those stars.

“Yes. And although darkness and ruin came, I have sought out your soul and I have come to reclaim my bride, my Queen, my wife”, he answered back resolutely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The truth will out - is what I said about this chapter when I was writing this. 
> 
> Some more craziness on Aidon's part and some more disbelief on Ella's part, but we're approaching the point, where Ella will find out the real story.


End file.
